THE SPICE OF LIFE
AND OTHER ESSAYS
by
G. K. CHESTERTON
Edited by
DOROTHY COLLINS
These essays cover a wide range of time and source. The Spice of Life was written only three months before G.K. Chesterton died. None of them has appeared in a collection before.
D.E.C.
CONTENTS
Part One: Essays on Literature in General
Sentimental Literature
How to Write a Detective Story
Fiction as Food
The Soul in Every Legend
Part Two: On Particular Books and Writers
The Macbeths
The Everlasting Nights
Aesop’s Fables
Both Sides of the Looking-Glass
And So To Bed
As Large as Life in Dickens
Disputes on Dickens
Charlotte Bronte as a Romantic
Part Three: Thought and Belief
Anti-Religious Thought in the Eighteenth Century
The Camp and the Cathedral
The Religious Aspect of Westminster Abbey
The Religious Aim of Education
The Philosophy of Islands
Part Four: At Home and Abroad
On Holidays
The Peasant
The Lost Railway Station
Bethlehem and the Great Cities
The Sacredness of Sites
Scipio and the Children
The Real Issue
Part Five: The Spice of Life
The Comic Constable
Capone’s Pal
On Losing One’s Head
The Spice of Life
On Fragments
Sources
THE ESSAY by G. K. Chesterton.
THE ESSAY is the only literary form which confesses, in its very name, that the rash act known as writing is really a leap in the dark. When men try to write a tragedy, they do not call the tragedy a try-on. Those who have toiled through the twelve books of an epic, writing it with their own hands, have seldom pretended that they have merely tossed off an epic as an experiment. But an essay, by its very name as well as its very nature, really is a try-on and really is an experiment. A man does not really write an essay. He does really essay to write an essay. One result is that, while there are many famous essays, there is fortunately no model essay. The perfect essay has never been written, for the simple reason that the essay has never really been written. Men have tried to write something, to find out what it was supposed to be. In this respect the essay is a typically modern product and is full of the future and the praise of experiment and adventure. In itself it remains somewhat elusive, and I will own that I am haunted with a faint suspicion that the essay will probably become rather more cogent and dogmatic, merely because of the deep and deadly divisions which ethical and economic problems may force upon us. But let us hope there will always be a place for the essay that is really an essay. St. Thomas Aquinas, with his usual common sense, said that neither the active nor the contemplative life could be lived without relaxation, in the form of jokes and games. The drama or the epic might be called the active life of literature; the sonnet or the ode the contemplative life. The essay is the joke.
Extract from introductory essay by G. K. Chesterton to Essays of the Year. See pp. 173-5 for all sources.
PART ONE: LITERATURE IN GENERAL
SENTIMENTAL LITERATURE
WE SHALL never attain to a serious and complete school of criticism so long as the word ‘sentimental’ is regarded as a term of depreciation. That ‘passionate’ should be a complimentary form and ‘sentimental’ a hostile one is as utterly unmeaning and ridiculous as it would be if ‘blue’ were complimentary and ‘green’ hostile. The difference between passion and sentiment is not, as is so often assumed, a difference in sincerity or wholesomeness or reality of feeling. It is a difference between two ways of looking at the same unquestionable facts of life. True sentiment consists in taking the central emotions of life not as passion takes them, personally, but impersonally, with a certain light and open confession of them as things common to us all. Passion is always a secret; it cannot be confessed; it is always a discovery; it cannot be shared. But sentiment stands for that frame of mind in which all men admit, with a half-humorous and half magnanimous weakness, that they all possess the same secret, and have all made the same discovery. Romeo and Juliet, for example, is passionate. Love’s Labour’s Lost is sentimental. No man, perhaps, was more sentimental than Thackeray; a certain kind of cynicism is akin to sentiment in that it treats the emotions openly and lightly. To the man of passion, love and the world are new; to the man of sentiment they are infinitely old.
It is absolutely necessary to have some such clear idea as this in our heads before we can do justice to the immense flood of sentimentalism which is one of the heaviest items in the actual output of popular literature. If sentimental literature is to be condemned it must emphatically not be because it is sentimental, it must be because it is not literature. To complain that such literature is sultry and relaxing, that it melts the character for a time into mere receptivity, that it has scarcely more practical nourishment in it than the sugar off a wedding-cake—to say all this is to complain that Othello is tragic or that the Mikado degenerates into frivolity. Sentimentality ought not to be anything but a passing mood; people who are sentimental day and night are among the most atrocious of the enemies of society. Dealing with them is like seeing an interminable number of poetical sunsets going on in the early morning. If sentimental literature is a curse, it is not so much because it is read widely, as because it is read exclusively.
There is a certain class of human feelings which must be indulged, but which must not be trusted; to deny them is to become a prig, but to confide in them is to cease to be a man. There has, for example, arisen of late years in literature and philosophy that craving for the strong man which is the mark of weakness. To jeer at the philosophy of force and supremacy would be abominable, it would be like jeering at biliousness or toothache. One of the most brilliant men of the nineteenth century was the philosopher of force and supremacy, Nietzsche, and he died in a madhouse. There have been many things, friendly and hostile, said about Nietzsche’s philosophy, but few so far have pointed out the basic fact that it is sentimental. It yields utterly to one of the oldest, most generous, and most excusable of the weaknesses of humanity, the hunger for the strong man. If any of Nietzsche’s followers wish to find the fullest and heartiest acceptance of their master’s doctrines, the most unrestrained prostration before masculine pride and violence, they will always find it in the novelettes. In these slight and periodical forms of sentimental fiction we find pre-eminently developed the tendency to give to the hero that kind of humour which dishonours the giver. Just as nations crown their despots in their periods of weakness, so human nature in its periods of weakness craves for despots, more than it ever craved for liberty. It is a foolish feeling, and, perhaps an immoral one, but it has one quality which may slightly interest us, it is absolutely universal: nor are the most advanced or intellectual of mankind in this respect one scrap less sentimental than the rest.
Indeed, there are, perhaps no circles in which women are so sentimental and subservient as in unconventional circles. The tendency which leads the popular novelette to deify mere arrogance and possession is emphatically one of those kindly sins which must be repudiated without being despised. It is Literary Imperialism, and it is as old as the fear of life, which is older and much wiser than the fear of death. To the same class as this idolatry of bone or brain belongs the idolatry of title or class or calling, which is exhibited in sentimental literature. It is snobbish, and it is a snobbishness which is vital as the blood, and seems almost as old as the stars. It is vulgar, but this kind of vulgarity at least fulfils its name, and is indeed common. The problem of sentimental literature is the problem of whether there must not be somewhere an outlet for these follies which one would call pardonable if they did not seem too mighty and eternal to be pardoned. It is the problem whether one must not expect that people will be sentimental if they are neither old enough nor wise enough to be passionate.
This much, then, can be said about the vices of popular sentimentalism: that at least they are old and wholesome vices. Sentimentality, which it is fashionable to call morbid, is of all things most natural and healthy; it is the very extravagance of youthful health. Whatever may be said against the novelettes and serials which foster the profound sentimentalism of the man in the street, there is no count against them which bears any resemblance to the heavy responsibility of the polished and cynical fiction fashionable among the educated class. It does not bring into the world new sins or sinister levities or passions at once savage and artificial. The novelette may basely grovel before strength, but at least it does not basely grovel before weakness. It may speak openly and without reticence of emotions that are sacred and should be kept in the heart, but at least it does not speak openly and without reticence of emotions that are despicable and should be spewed out of the mouth. Its snobbery and autocracy are kindlier than many forms of emancipation; it is at least human even where it fails to be humane.
And of its merits there is surely something to be said: that the tired sempstress or the overworked shopgirl should only have as it were to open a door and find herself in a new room in which new and outrageously elegant figures are performing new and outrageously dignified actions is a gift that outweighs many stories of magic. That the actions of the figures are singularly languid and inevitable, that the characters are endowed with a very simple stock of virtues and vices, that the morality of the story is never for a moment mingled or perplexed, that over the whole scene broods the presence of an utterly fatalistic optimism, all this only makes the matter richer and quieter for tired intellects and tortured nerves.
That these dreams sometimes lead the dreamers to exaggerate and blunder, to overestimate or to underestimate life, may well be. The same troubles arose in connection with Christianity, that stupendous triumph of sentiment. Christianity also has led the weak, who were its care, to expect both too much and too little of life. But the supreme fact remains, that we can never estimate the value of a dream; that we can never know whether the ascetics, who drugged themselves with visions and scourged themselves with rods, were not the happiest of all the children of men.
HOW TO WRITE A DETECTIVE STORY
From G. K.’s Weekly, October 17, 1925
Let it be understood that I write this article as one wholly conscious that he has failed to write a detective story. But I have failed a good many times. My authority is therefore practical and scientific, like that of some great statesman or social thinker dealing with Unemployment or the Housing Problem. I do not pretend that I have achieved the ideal that I set up here for the young student; I am, if you will, rather the awful example for him to avoid. None the less I believe that there are ideals of detective writings, as of everything else worth doing; and I wonder they are not more often set out in all that popular didactic literature which teaches us how to do so many things so much less worth doing; as, for instance, how to succeed. Indeed, I wonder very much that the title at the top of this article does not stare at us from every bookstall. Pamphlets are published teaching people all sorts of things that cannot possibly be learnt, such as personality, popularity, poetry, and charm. Even those parts of literature and journalism that most obviously cannot be learnt are assiduously taught. But here is a piece of plain straightforward literary craftsmanship, constructive rather than creative, which could to some limited extent be taught and even, in very lucky instances, learnt. Sooner or later I suppose the want will be supplied, in that commercial system in which supply immediately answers to demand, and in which everybody seems to be thoroughly dissatisfied and unable to get anything he wants. Sooner or later, I suppose, there will not only be text-books teaching criminal investigators, but text-books teaching criminals. It will be but a slight change from the present tone of financial ethics, and when the shrewd and vigorous business mind has broken away from the last lingering influence of dogmas invented by priests, journalism and advertisement will show the same indifference to the taboos of today as does today to the taboos of the Middle Ages. Burglary will be explained like usury, and there will be no more disguise about cutting throats than there is about cornering markets. The bookstalls will be brightened with titles like ‘Forgery in Fifteen Lessons,’ and ‘Why Endure Married Misery?’ with a popularization of poisoning fully as scientific as the popularization of Divorce and Birth-Control.
But, as we are so often reminded, we must not be in a hurry for the arrival of a happy humanity; and meanwhile, we seem to be quite as likely to get good advice about committing crimes as good advice about detecting them, or about describing how they could be detected. I imagine the explanation is that the crime, the detection, the description, and the description of the description, do all demand a certain slight element of thought, while succeeding and writing a book on success in no way necessitate this tiresome experience. Anyhow, I find in my own case that when I begin to think of the theory of detective stories, I do become what some would call theoretical. That is, I begin at the beginning, without any pep, snap, zip or other essential of the art of arresting the attention, without in any way disturbing or awakening the mind.
The first and fundamental principle is that the aim of a mystery story, as of every other story and every other mystery, is not darkness but light. The story is written for the moment when the reader does understand, not merely for the many preliminary moments when he does not understand. The misunderstanding is only meant as a dark outline of cloud to bring out the brightness of that instant of intelligibility; and most bad detective stories are bad because they fail upon this point. The writers have a strange notion that it is their business to baffle the reader; and that so long as they baffle him it does not matter if they disappoint him. But it is not only necessary to hide a secret, it is also necessary to have a secret; and to have a secret worth hiding. The climax must not be an anti-climax; it must not merely consist of leading the reader a dance and leaving him in a ditch. The climax must not be only the bursting of a bubble but rather the breaking of a dawn; only that the daybreak is accentuated by the dark. Any form of art, however trivial, refers back to some serious truths; and though we are dealing with nothing more momentous than a mob of Watsons, all watching with round eyes like owls, it is still permissible to insist that it is the people who sat in darkness who have seen a great light; and that the darkness is only valuable in making vivid a great light in the mind. It always struck me as an amusing coincidence that the best of the Sherlock Holmes stories bore, with a totally different application and significance, a title that might have been invented to express this primal illumination; the title of “Silver Blaze”.
The second great principle is that the soul of detective fiction is not complexity but simplicity. The secret may appear complex, but it must be simple; and in this also it is a symbol of higher mysteries. The writer is there to explain the mystery; but he ought not to be needed to explain the explanation. The explanation should explain itself; it should be something that can be hissed (by the villain, of course) in a few whispered words or shrieked preferably by the heroine before she swoons under the shock of the belated realization that two and two make four. Now some literary detectives make the solution more complicated than the mystery, and the crime more complicated than the solution.
Thirdly, it follows that so far as possible the fact or figure explaining everything should be a familiar fact or figure. The criminal should be in the foreground, not in the capacity of criminal, but in some other capacity which nevertheless gives him a natural right to be in the foreground. I will take as a convenient case the one I have already quoted; the story of Silver Blaze. Sherlock Holmes is as familiar as Shakespeare; so there is no injustice by this time in letting out the secret of one of the first of these famous tales. News is brought to Sherlock Holmes that a valuable race-horse has been stolen, and the trainer guarding him murdered by the thief. Various people, of course, are plausibly suspected of the theft and murder; and everybody concentrates on the serious police problem of who can have killed the trainer. The simple truth is that the horse killed him. Now I take that as a model because the truth is so very simple. The truth really is so very obvious.
At any rate, the point is that the horse is very obvious. The story is named after the horse; it is all about the horse; the horse is in the foreground all the time, but always in another capacity. As a thing of great value he remains for the reader the Favourite; it is only as a criminal that he is a dark horse. It is a story of theft in which the horse plays the part of the jewel until we forget that the jewel can also play the part of the weapon. That is one of the first rules I would suggest, if I had to make rules for this form of composition. Generally speaking, the agent should be a familiar figure in an unfamiliar function. The thing that we realize must be a thing that we recognize; that is it must be something previously known, and it ought to be something prominently displayed. Otherwise there is no surprise in mere novelty. It is useless for a thing to be unexpected if it was not worth expecting. But it should be prominent for one reason and responsible for another. A great part of the craft or trick of writing mystery stories consists in finding a convincing but misleading reason for the prominence of the criminal, over and above his legitimate business of committing the crime. Many mysteries fail merely by leaving him at loose ends in the story, with apparently nothing to do except to commit the crime. He is generally well off, or our just and equal law would probably have him arrested as a vagrant long before he was arrested as a murderer. We reach the stage of suspecting such a character by a very rapid if unconscious process of elimination. Generally we suspect him merely because he has not been suspected. The art of narrative consists in convincing the reader for a time, not only that the character might have come on the premises with no intention to commit a felony, but that the author has put him there with some intention that is not felonious. For the detective story is only a game; and in that game the reader is not really wrestling with the criminal but with the author.
What the writer has to remember, in this sort of game, is that the reader will not say, as he sometimes might of a serious or realistic study: “Why did the surveyor in green spectacles climb the tree to look into the lady doctor’s back garden?” He will insensibly and inevitably say, “Why did the author make the surveyor climb a tree, or introduce any surveyor at all?” The reader may admit that the town would in any case need a surveyor, without admitting that the tale would in any case need one. It is necessary to explain his presence in the tale (and the tree) not only by suggesting why the town council put him there, but why the author put him there. Over and above any little crimes he may intend to indulge in, in the inner chamber of the story, he must have already some other justification as a character in a story and not only as a mere miserable material person in real life. The instinct of the reader, playing hide-and-seek with the writer, who is his real enemy, is always to say with suspicion, “Yes, I know a surveyor might climb a tree; I am quite aware that there are trees and that there are surveyors, but what are you doing with them? Why did you make this particular surveyor climb this particular tree in this particular tale, you cunning and evil-minded man?”
This I should call the fourth principle to be remembered, as in the other cases, people probably will not realize that it is practical, because the principles on which it rests sound theoretical. It rests on the fact that in the classification of the arts, mysterious murders belong to the grand and joyful company of the things called jokes. The story is a fancy; an avowedly fictitious fiction. We may say if we like that it is a very artificial form of art. I should prefer to say that it is professedly a toy, a thing that children ‘pretend’ wish. From this it follows that the reader, who is a simple child and therefore very wide awake, is conscious not only of the toy but of the invisible playmate who is the maker of the toy, and the author of the trick. The innocent child is very sharp and not a little suspicious. And one of the first rules I repeat, for the maker of a tale that shall be a trick, is to remember that the masked murderer must have an artistic right to be on the scene and not merely a realistic right to be in the world. He must not only come to the house on business, but on the business of the story; it is not only a question of the motive of the visitor but of the motive of the author. The ideal mystery story is one in which he is such a character as the author would have created for his own sake, or for the sake of making the story move in other necessary matters, and then be found to be present there, not for the obvious and sufficient reason, but for a second and a secret one. I will add that for this reason, despite the sneers at ‘love-interest’ there is a good deal to be said for the tradition of sentiment and slower or more Victorian narration. Some may call it a bore, but it may succeed as a blind.
Lastly the principle that the detective story like every literary form starts with an idea, and does not merely start out to find one, applies also to its more material mechanical detail. Where the story turns upon detection, it is still necessary that the writer should begin from the inside, though the detective approaches from the outside. Every good problem of this type originates in a positive notion, which is in itself a simple notion; some fact of daily life that the writer can remember and the reader can forget. But anyhow, a tale has to be founded on a truth; and though opium may be added to it, it must not merely be an opium dream.
HUMOUR
HUMOUR, in the modern use of the term, signifies a perception of the comic or incongruous of a special sort; generally distinguished from Wit, as being on the one side more subtle, or on the other side more vague. It is thus a term which not only refuses to be defined, but in a sense boasts of being indefinable; and it would commonly be regarded as a deficiency in humour to search for a definition of humour. The modern use of the term, however, is by no means the primary or necessary use of it; and it is one of the cases, rarer than is commonly supposed, in which derivation offers at least an approach to definition. Everybody knows that ‘Humor’, in the Latin sense of ‘moisture’ was applied here as part of the old physiological theory, by which the characters of men varied according to the proportions of certain different secretions in the human body; as, for instance, that the predominance of phlegm produced the phlegmatic humour. By the time of the full consolidation of the English language, it had thus become possible for Ben Jonson and others to use the word ‘humour’ rather in the sense of ‘the ruling passion’. With this there necessarily went an idea of exaggeration; and by the end of the process the character of a humorist was more or less identical with what we should call an eccentric. The next stages of the development, which are rather slow and subtle correspond to the various degrees in which the eccentric has become conscious of his eccentricity. England has always been especially rich in these eccentrics; and in England, where everything was less logical and more casual than in other countries, the eccentric long remained, as we should say, half unconsciously and half consciously humorous. The blend, and the beginnings of the modern meaning, may perhaps be dated at about the time of Walter Scott’s Waverley Novels; when Guy Mannering complains of Councillor Pleydell as ‘a crack-brained humorist’. For Pleydell is indeed laughed at for his little vanities or whims; but he himself joins in the laugh and sees the humour of his humour. Since then the word has come to be used more and more exclusively of conscious humour; and generally of a rather deep and delicate appreciation of the absurdities of others.
Nevertheless there clings to the word Humour, especially when balanced against the word Wit, a sort of tradition or atmosphere that belongs to the old eccentrics whose eccentricity was always wilful and not infrequently blind. The distinction is a fine one; but one of the elements remaining in this blend is a certain sense of being laughed at, as well as of laughing. It involves some confession of human weakness; whereas wit is rather the human intellect exerting its full strength, though perhaps upon a small point. Wit is reason on its judgment seat; and though the offenders may be touched lightly, the point is that the judge is not touched at all. But humour always has in it some idea of the humorist himself being at a disadvantage and caught in the entanglements and contradictions of human life. It is a grave error to underrate Wit as something trivial; for certain purposes of satire it can truly be the sword of the spirit, and the satirist bears not the sword in vain. But it is essential to wit that he should bear the sword with ease; that for the wit the weapon should be light if the blow be heavy; that there should be no question of his being encumbered with his instrument or laying open his guard. But humour can be of the finest and yet lay open the guard or confess its inconsistency. When Voltaire said, commenting on the judicial murder of Byng, “In England they kill one Admiral to encourage the others,” it would immediately be recognized as humour. But we rightly class Voltaire as a wit, because he represents the consistent human reason detesting an inconsistency. We shall be very wrong if we despise him as a wit, for that French clearness has depths of irony; there is, for instance, more than is seen at a glance in the very word ‘encourage’. But it is true that the wit is here a judge independent of the judges, unaffected by the King or the Admiral or the English Courtmartial or the mob. He is abstract justice recording a contradiction. But when Falstaff (a model of the humorist become or becoming conscious) cries out in desperate bravado, “They hate us youth,” the incongruity between the speech and the corpulent old humbug of a speaker is present to his own mind, as well as to ours. He also discovers a contradiction, but it is in himself; for Falstaff really did bemuse himself with youthful companionship which he knew to be like a drug or a dream; and indeed Shakespeare himself, in one at least of the Sonnets, becomes bitterly conscious of the same illusion. There is therefore in humour, or at least in the origins of humour, something of this idea of the eccentric caught in the act of eccentricity and brazening it out; something of one surprised in disarray and become conscious of the chaos within. Wit corresponds to the divine virtue of justice, in so far as so dangerous a virtue can belong to man. Humour corresponds to the human virtue of humility and is only more divine because it has, for the moment, more sense of the mysteries.
If there be so much of enlightenment to be gathered from the history of the word, there is very little to be gathered from any of the attempts at a scientific history of the thing. The speculations on the nature of any reaction to the risible belong to the larger and more elementary subject of Laughter and are for the department of psychology; according to some, almost for that of physiology. Whatever be their value touching the primitive function of laughter, they throw very little light on the highly civilized product of humour. It may well be questioned whether some of the explanations are not too crude even for the crudest origins; that they hardly apply even to the savage and certainly do not apply to the child. It has been suggested, for example, that all laughter had its origin in a sort of cruelty, in an exultation over the pain or ignominy of an enemy; but it is very hard even for the most imaginative psychologist to believe that, when a baby bursts out laughing at the image of the cow jumping over the moon, he is really finding pleasure in the probability of the cow breaking her leg when she comes down again. The truth is that all these primitive and prehistoric origins are largely unknown and possibly unknowable; and like all the unknown and unknowable are a field for furious wars of religion. Such primary human causes will always be interpreted differently according to different philosophies of human life. Another philosophy would say, for instance, that laughter is due not to an animal cruelty but to a purely human realization of the contrast between man’s spiritual immensity within and his littleness and restriction without, for it is itself a joke that a house should be larger inside than out. According to such a view, the very incompatability between the sense of human dignity and the perpetual possibility of incidental indignities, produces the primary or archetypal joke of the old gentleman sitting down suddenly on the ice. We do not laugh thus when a tree or a rock tumbles down; because we do not know the sense of self-esteem or serious importance within. But such speculations in psychology, especially in primitive psychology, have very little to do with the actual history of comedy as an artistic creation.
There is no doubt that comedy existed as an artistic creation many thousands of years ago, in the case of peoples whose life and letters we can sufficiently understand to appreciate the fine shades of meaning; especially, of course, in the case of the Greeks. It is difficult for us to say how far it existed in civilizations more remote of which the records are for us more stiff and symbolic; but the very limitation of symbolism which makes it hard for us to prove its existence should warn us against assuming without evidence that it did not exist. We know more about Greek humour than about Hittite humour, at least partly for the simple reason that we know Greek better than we know any sort of colloquial Hittite; and while what applies to Hittite applies too in a less degree to Hebrew, a case like that of early Hebrew presents something of the same problem of limitation. But without any attempts to settle such problems of scholarship, it is hard to believe that the highest sense of human satire was not present in the words of Job. “Truly you are wise and wisdom will die with you”; or that no perception of a poetic contrast was felt by so great a poet when he said of Behemoth, commonly identified with the hippopotamus; “Canst thou play with him as with a bird?” It is probable that the Chinese civilization, in which the quality of the quaint and the fantastic has flowered with a beautiful luxuriance for many centuries, could also quote fairly early examples of the same order of fancy.
In any case, humour is in the very foundations of our European literature, which alone is quite sufficiently a part of ourselves for the full appreciation of so subtle and sometimes sub-conscious a quality. Even a schoolboy can see it in such scenes of Aristophanes as that in which the dead man sits up in indignation at having to pay the toll of the Styx, and says he would rather come to life again; or when Dionysus asks to see the wicked in hell and is answered by a gesture pointing at the audience. Before the period of intellectual controversies in Athens, indeed, we generally find in Greek poetry, as in the greater part of all human folk lore, that the joke is a practical joke. To a robust taste, however, it is none the less of a joke for that. For the joke of Odysseus calling himself Noman is not, as some suppose, a sort of trivial pun or verbalism; the joke is in the gigantic image of the raging Cyclops, roaring as if to rend the mountains, after being defeated by something so simple and so small. And this example is worth noting; as representing what is really the fun of all the fairy-tales; the notion of something apparently omnipotent made impotent by some tiny trick. This fairy-tale idea is undoubtedly one of the primitive fountains from which flows the long winding stream of historic humour. When Puss in Boots persuades the boastful magician to turn into a mouse and be eaten, it almost deserves to be called wit.
After these two early expressions, the practical joke of the folk-tale and the more philosophic fun of the Old Comedy, the history of humour is simply the history of literature. It is especially the history of European literature; for this sane sense of the incongruous is one of the highest qualities balancing the European spirit. It would be easy to go through the rich records of every nation and note this element in almost every novel or play, and in not a few poems or philosophical works. There is naturally no space for such a survey; but three great names, one English, one French and a third Spanish, may be mentioned for their historical quality; since they opened new epochs and even their few superiors were still their followers. The first of these determining names is that of Chaucer, whose urbanity has done something to conceal his real originality. Medieval civilization had a very powerful sense of the grotesque, as is apparent in its sculpture alone; but it was in a sense a fighting sentiment; it dealt with dragons and devils; it was alive, but it was very decidedly kicking. Chaucer brought into this atmosphere a cool air of true comedy; a sort of incongruity most incongruous in that world. In his personal sketches we have a new and very English element, of at once laughing at people and liking them. The whole of humorous fiction, if not the whole of fiction, dates from the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales. Rather later, Rabelais opened a new chapter by showing that intellectual things could be treated with the energy of high spirits and a sort of pressure of physical exuberance, which was itself humorous in its very human abandon. He will always be the inspiration of a certain sort of genial impatience; and the moments when the great human mind boils over like a pot. The Renaissance itself was, of course, such a boiling, but the elements were some of them more poisonous; though a word should be said for the tonics of that time, the humour of Erasmus and of More. Thirdly, there appeared with the great Cervantes an element new in its explicit expression; that grand and very Christian quality of the man who laughs at himself. Cervantes was himself more chivalrous than most men when he began to mock at chivalry. Since his time, humour in this purely humorous sense, the confession of complexity and weakness already remarked upon, has been a sort of secret of the high culture of the West. The influence of Cervantes and Rabelais, and the rest runs through all modern letters, especially our own; taking on a shrewd and acid tang in Swift, a more delicate and perhaps more dubious taste in Sterne, passing on through every sort of experiment of essay or comedy, pausing upon the pastoral gaiety of Goldsmith or going on finally to bring forth, like a great birth of giants, the walking caricatures of Dickens. Nor is it altogether a national accident that the tradition has here been followed in our own nation. For it is true that humour, in the special and even limited sense here given to it, humour as distinct from wit, from satire, from irony or from many things that may legitimately produce amusement, has been a thing strongly and specially present in English life and letters. That we may not in turn depreciate the wit and logic of the rest of the world, it will be well to remember that humour does originate in the half-conscious eccentric, that it is in part a confession of inconsistency, but, when all is said, it has added a new beauty to human life. It may even be noted that there has appeared especially in England a new variety of humour, more properly to be called Nonsense. Nonsense may be described as humour which has for the moment renounced all connection with wit. It is humour that abandons all attempt at intellectual justification; and does not merely jest at the incongruity of some accident or practical joke, as a by-product of real life, but extracts and enjoys it for its own sake. Jabberwocky is not a parody on anything; the Jumblies are not a satire on anybody; they are folly for folly’s sake on the same lines as art for art’s sake, or more properly beauty for beauty’s sake; and they do not serve any social purpose except perhaps the purpose of a holiday. Here again it will be well to remember that even the work of humour should not consist entirely of holidays. But this art of nonsense is a valuable contribution to culture; and it is very largely, or almost entirely, an English contribution. So cultivated and competent a foreign observer as M. Emile Cammaerts has remarked that it is so native as to be at first quite unmeaning to foreigners. This is perhaps the latest phase in the history of humour; but it will be well even in this case to preserve what is so essential a virtue of humour; the virtue of proportion. Humour, like wit, is related however indirectly, to truth and the eternal virtues; as it is the greatest incongruity of all to be serious about humour, so it is the worst sort of pomposity to be monotonously proud of humour; for it is itself the chief antidote to pride; and has been, ever since the time of the Book of Proverbs, the hammer of fools.
FICTION AS FOOD
I have been asked to explain what I meant by saying that “Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.” I have no notion when I said it or where I said it, or even whether I said it; in the sense that I do not now remember ever saying it at all. But I do know why I said it; if I ever said it at all. That is the advantage of believing in what some call dogma and others call logic. Some people seem to imagine that a man being sceptical and changing his beliefs, or even a man being cynical and disregarding his beliefs, is a sort of advantage to him in liberality and flexibility of mind. The truth is exactly the other way. By the very laws of the mind, it is more difficult to remember disconnected things than connected things; and a man is much more in control of a whole range of controversy if he has connected beliefs than if he had never had anything but disconnected doubts. Therefore I can immediately understand the sentence submitted to me, as if it were a sentence made up by somebody else; as perhaps it was.
Literature is a luxury, because it is part of what is popularly called “having the best of everything”. Matthew Arnold would have been pained to be called popular; but he said what is really the same thing as the popular saying; that Culture is knowing the best that has been said and thought. Literature is indeed one of those nobler luxuries which a well-governed state would extend to all, and even regard as necessities in that nobler sense. But it is a luxury in the plain sense that human beings can do without it and still be tolerably human, or even tolerably happy. But human beings cannot be human without some field of fancy or imagination; some vague idea of the romance of life; and even some holiday of the mind in a romance that is a refuge from life.
Every healthy person at some period must feed on fiction as well as fact; because fact is a thing which the world gives to him, whereas fiction is a thing which he gives to the world. It has nothing to do with a man being able to write; or even with his being able to read. Perhaps its best period is that of childhood, and what is called playing or pretending. But it is still true when the child begins to read or sometimes (heaven help him) to write. Anybody who remembers a favourite fairy-story will have a strong sense of its original solidity and richness and even definite detail; and will be surprised, if he re-reads it in later life, to find how few and bald were the words which his own imagination made not only vivid but varied. And even the errand-boy who reads hundreds of penny-dreadfuls, or the lady who read hundreds of novels from the circulating library, were living an imaginative life which did not come wholly from without.
Now nobody supposes that all those things which feed the hunger for fiction would commend themselves to the palate of literature. Literature is only that rare sort of fiction which rises to a certain standard of objective beauty and truth. When a child, almost as soon as he can speak, has invented the imaginary family of Pubbles, with father and mother and naughty child all complete, nobody supposes that the psychology of the house of Pubbles is differentiated as delicately as that of the family of Poynton, in a story by Henry James. When the lady has followed and forgotten a hundred heroines in their wanderings through mysterious suburban flats or murderous country rectories, nobody supposes that each of them remains even for her a portrait, as vivid as Elizabeth Bennet or Becky Sharp. It is not a thing like having an appreciation of a good wine; it is a thing like
having an appetite for a square meal; it is not a vintage but a viand.
Now this general need is connected with the deepest things in man; and the strangest thing about him, which is being a man. As a large mirror will make one room look like two rooms, so the mind of man is from the first a double mind; a thing of reflection and living in two worlds at once. The caveman who was not content that reindeers should be real—did something that no other animal ever has done or apparently ever will do. Of course, we cannot prove that the animal has not imagination in the inferior sense. For all we can prove, the rhinoceros may have an Invisible Playmate; and yet realize with his reason that “it is but a rhinoceros of air; that lingers in the garden there.”
Scientifically speaking, we cannot demonstrate that the rabbit has not an imaginary family of rabbits, on the lines of Brer Rabbit, as well as the somewhat large and increasing family which the rabbit produces in the ordinary way of business. But there is such a thing as common sense; and I think our common sense inclines us to suppose that any such artistic daydream, if it exists in beasts and birds, is much more rudimentary and stationary; and has certainly never advanced to the point of expression, even in fairy-tales or penny-dreadfuls. But for man some form of this fanciful experience is essential as a mere fact of experience. If he has not that daydream all his day, he is not man; and if he is not man, there is nobody to write about and nobody to write about him.
I was a great reader of novels until I began to review them, when I naturally left off reading them. I do not mean to admit that I did them any injustice; I studied and sampled them with the purpose of being strictly fair; but I do not call that ‘novel reading’ in the old enchanting sense. If I read them thoroughly I still read them rapidly; which is quite against my instincts for the mere luxury of reading. When I was a boy and really had a new adventure story, when I was a young man and read my first few detective stories, I did not enjoy precipitation, but actually enjoyed delay. The pleasure was so intense that I was always putting it off. For it is one of the two or three big blunders in modern morality to suppose that the strongest eagerness expresses itself in extravagance. The strongest eagerness always expresses itself in thrift. That is why the French Revolution was French and not English; why the careful peasants have turned the world upside-down, while the careless labourers have cheerfully left it as it was. When a child’s soul is in the most starry ecstasy of greed he desires to have his cake, not to eat it. I am English myself, and I have never managed to be thrifty about anything else.
But about my early novel reading I was as thrifty as a French peasant— and as greedy. I loved to look at the mere solid bulk of a sensational novel as one looks at the solid bulk of a cheese; to open the first page, dally with the first paragraph, and then shut it again, feeling how little pleasure I had lost as yet. And my favourite novelists are still those great nineteenth-century novelists who give an impression of bewildering bulk and variety, Scott or Dickens or Thackeray. I have artistic pleasure as keen or keener, I have moral sympathy as intense or more intense with many later writers; with the hard-hitting mot juste of Stevenson’s stories or the insurgent irony of Mr. Belloc’s. But Stevenson has one fault as a novelist, that he must be read quickly. Novels like Belloc’s Mr. Burden must not only be read quickly but fiercely; they describe a short, sharp struggle; the mood both of writer and reader is heroic and abnormal, like that of two men fighting a duel. But Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens had the mysterious trick or talent of the inexhaustible novel.
Even when we have come to the end of the story we somehow feel that it is endless. People say they have read Pickwick five times or fifty times or five hundred times. For my part I have only read Pickwick once. Since then I have lived in Pickwick; walked into it when and where I chose, as a man walks into his club. But whenever I have walked in, it seemed to me that I found something new. I am not sure that stringent modern artists like Stevenson or Mr. Belloc do not actually suffer from the strictness and swiftness of their art. If a book is a book to be lived in, it should be (like a house to be lived in) a little untidy.
Apart from such chaotic classics as these, my own taste in novel reading is one which I am prepared in a rather especial manner, not only to declare, but to defend. My taste is for the sensational novel, the detective story, the story about death, robbery and secret societies; a taste which I share in common with the bulk at least of the male population of this world. There was a time in my own melodramatic boyhood when I became quite fastidious in this respect. I would look at the first chapter of any new novel as a final test of its merits. If there was a murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I read the story. If there was no murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I dismissed the story as tea-table twaddle, which it often really was. But we all lose a little of that fine edge of austerity and idealism which sharpened our spiritual standard in our youth. I have come to compromise with the tea-table and to be less insistent about the sofa. As long as a corpse or two turns up in the second, the third, nay even the fourth or fifth chapter, I make allowance for human weakness, and I ask no more. But a novel without any death in it is still to me a novel without any life in it. I admit that the very best of the tea-table novels are great art—for instance, Emma or Northanger Abbey. Sheer elemental genius can make a work of art out of anything. Michelangelo might make a statue out of mud, and Jane Austen could make a novel out of tea—that much more contemptible substance. But on the whole I think that a tale about one man killing another man is more likely to have something in it than a tale in which, all the characters are talking trivialities without any of that instant and silent presence of death which is one of the strong spiritual bonds of all mankind. I still prefer the novel in which one person does another person to death to the novel in which all the persons are feebly (and vainly) trying to get the others to come to life.
But I have another and more important quarrel about the sensational novel. There seems to be a very general idea that the romance of the tomahawk will be (or will run the risk of being) more immoral than the romance of the teapot. This I violently deny. And in this I have the support of practically all the old moral traditions of our civilization and of every civilization. High or low, good or bad, clever or stupid, a moral story almost always meant a murderous story. For the old Greeks a moral play was one full of madness and slaying. For the great medievals a moral play was one which exhibited the dancing of the devil and the open jaws of hell. For the great Protestant moralists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a moral story meant a story in which a parricide was struck by lightning or a boy was drowned for fishing on a Sunday. For the more rationalistic moralists of the eighteenth century, such as Hogarth, Richardson, and the author of Sandford and Merton, all agreed that shocking calamities could properly be indicated as the result of evil doing; that the more shocking those calamities were the more moral they were. It is only in our exhausted and agnostic age that the idea has been started that if one is moral one must not be melodramatic.
But I believe that sensational novels are the most moral part of modern fiction, and I believe it upon two converging lines, such as make all real conviction. It is, I think, the fact that melodramatic fiction is moral and not immoral. And it is, I think, the abstract truth that any literature that represents our life as dangerous and startling is truer than any literature that represents it as dubious and languid. For life is a fight and is not a conversation.
THE SOUL IN EVERY LEGEND
I THINK it was that very fine and subtle writer, Vernon Lee, who lapsed into literary heresy by saying that a poet is always a pantheist. I could only accept this in the amended form that no poet, by any possibility, has ever been or ever will be a pantheist. It was precisely because Walt Whitman sometimes tried on principle to be a pantheist, that so great a genius just missed being a poet. Shelley did not miss being a poet; but he did miss being a pantheist. A deep imaginative instinct, beyond all his cheap philosophies, made him always do something which is the soul of imagination, but the very opposite of universalism. It made him insulate the object of which he wrote; making the cloud or the bird as solitary as possible in the sky. Imagination demands an image. An image demands a background. The background should be equal and level, or vast and vague, but only for the sake of the image. In writing of the skylark Shelley compares that unfortunate wild fowl to a lady in a tower, to a star, to a rose, to all sorts of things that are not in the least like a skylark. But they all have one touch, the touch of separation and solitude. Now pantheism means that nothing is thus separated; that the divine essence is equally distributed at any given moment in all the atoms of the universe; and that he who would see it imaginatively must see it as a whole. I deny that this was done by Shelley the poet; whatever may have been done by Shelley the prig. When he heard the skylark speaking to him like a spirit out of heaven, I deny that he heard at the same moment the crowing of cocks, the screaming of cockatoos, the gobbling of turkeys, the cawing of rooks, the clucking of hens and the pandemonium of the parrot-house at the Zoo; or that for him, at that moment, all these things mingled in one harmony or music of the spheres.
I do not deny that the poet may write an ode to a parrot as well as to a skylark; or for that matter a serenade to a penguin or a pelican. But he will prefer the parrot outside the parrot-house. He will prefer the pelican in the wilderness. In short, he will aim at seeing the object against a background, as one sees a star in the sky or an island in the sea. He will aim at seeing the object in the strict sense of distinguishing the object. And this element of distinction would alone distinguish such a poet from the vulgar universality of the ordinary pantheist. For the rest, Shelley’s poetry very seldom expressed Shelley’s philosophy. When once he began to sing, he generally sang the creeds that he refused to say. In the skylark, for instance, he does not in the least proclaim the doctrine of Universal Nature or the Immanence of God. What he does proclaim is the doctrine of Original Sin, or the Fall of Man. When the skylark ceases merely to flutter and begins really to fly, to sweep and to soar; when the verse takes on the swing and powerful pulsation of great poetry, it is not even about the isolation of the bird but the stranger isolation of the man. “We look before and after … our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”
But if we could scorn Hate and pride and fear, If we were things born Not to shed a tear —
There the pantheistic poet is telling a tale not told by all the parrots in the Zoological Gardens; but rather by the Bird of Paradise that came with us out of the Garden of Eden.
Mr. Bernard Shaw, in a preface to one of his plays, advances a thesis in science and then propounds it as a thesis in philosophy. It might well be described as a progressive pantheism, as compared with the static pantheism more commonly associated with pantheists. The current criticism will probably be that it is all very well for Mr. Shaw to talk philosophy, but he knows nothing about science. To me this seems the exact contrary of the fact. He has always been very well equipped with facts in his scientific controversies; and his logic, of which I can judge better, seems to me very conclusive on the purely scientific question. He is strictly scientific in refusing the test of cutting off a mouse’s tail, for instance, as affecting the question of acquired characteristics. As he very sensibly points out, an arbitrary amputation by somebody else is not an acquired characteristic at all; any more than we can talk of a man acquiring a railway accident. The Lamarckian suggestion is that the will counts; and nobody wills a railway accident. I think Mr. Shaw is entirely successful in his science; where I begin to doubt is precisely in his philosophy, and especially when he propounds it as a religion. And I doubt it because it ignores, as the more static pantheism ignores the same rather indescribable element which I can only call identity. I can only dimly describe it as the conviction that it is It.
Mr. Shaw suggests that we should all pool our legends and treat them all equally as legends; that is, as allegories. This, I fancy, is very much what was really done by the Neo-Platonists and other syncretists of the pagan sunset on the Mediterranean. They made a pool of all the legends; and it was rather a stagnant pool. Indeed the Mediterranean itself would henceforth have been little more than a stagnant pool, but for the wind of the spirit that blew on it from Bethlehem and Calvary; that is from real places alive with stories at least believed to be real. When the new world found something to follow, it had to be a man and not a myth, a tragedy and not a mummery. If the new world finds a new religion now, it is much more likely to be in Spiritualist miracles and a Spiritualist plan of heaven and earth, all to be believed down to the last detail, than in the weary impartiality of the pool of the Neo-Platonists. That pool may be a sea into which all religions ultimately run. It is certainly not a spring in which any religions originally rise. We shall never make a new legend by advertising for an allegory. The great myth comes from men who believe they have found a great truth, at least at first and that a vivid and final truth. If there be, as I believe, such a central truth, this is the only way in which men can receive that truth. But even if it be only a delusion, this is the only way in which it can be denied.
In short, it is not enough for a religion to include everything. It must include everything and something over. That is it must include everything and include something as well. It must answer that deep and mysterious human demand for everything; even if the nature of that demand be too deep to be easily defined in logic. It will never cease to be described in poetry. We might almost say that all poetry is a description of it. Even when you have only natural religion, you will still have supernatural poetry. And it will be poetic because it is particular, not because it is general. The new priest may proclaim, “The sea is God, the land is God and the sky is God; but yet there are not three Gods, but one God.” But even if the old priest be silenced, the old poet will always answer, “God is in a cave; God is in a stable; God is disguised and hidden. I alone know where he is; he is herding the cattle of Admetus; he is pouring out the wine of Cana.” The new republic may make the philosophical declaration, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all trees were evolved equal and endowed with the dignity of creative evolution.” But if in the silence that follows we overhear the poor nurse or the peasant mother telling fairy-tales to the children, she will always be saying, “And in the seventh garden beyond the seventh gate was the tree with the golden apples”, or “They sailed and sailed till they came to an island, and in the island was a meadow, and in the meadow the tree of life.”
Now according to the old rationalistic criticism, it was enough to say of a fancy that it was fanciful. It was enough to say that a religion was a romance, and a romance a delusion. But men like Mr. Shaw have already left that behind, in the years of wandering starting from the Dublin of the Protestants and the Darwin of the Professors. They already realized that there is “a soul in every dogma”, that religion cannot be left out of account, that rationalism cannot be left in control. Now if we are to look sympathetically for the soul in every dogma, surely we must look for that something in the soul which makes it clothe itself in every case in a particular and personal body. If this particularism always stubbornly recurs even in poetry, how can it be left out of philosophy? What is the meaning of this incurable itch to give to airy nothing, or still more airy everything, a local habitation and a name? Why is it always something at once odd and objective, a precious fruit or a flying cup or a buried key, that symbolizes the mystery of the world? Why should not the world symbolize the world? Why should not a sphere sufficiently represent universalism; so that the faithful might be found adoring a plum-pudding or a cannon-ball? Why should not a spiral sufficiently represent progress; and the pious bow down before a corkscrew? In practice we know that it would be impossible to dissociate a Christmas pudding from the sacramental specialism of Christmas; and the worship of the corkscrew, that hieratic serpent, would probably be traced to the mysteries of Dionysius. In a word, why are all mysteries concerned with the notion of finding a particular thing in a particular place? If we are to find the real meaning of every element in mythology, what is the real meaning of that element in it? I can see only one possible answer that satisfies the new more serious and sympathetic study of religion, even among sceptics; and that is that there really is something to which all these fancies are what forgeries are to a signature; that if the soul could be satisfied with the truth it would find it a tale as particular, as positive and as personal; that the light which we follow first as a wide white star actually narrows as we draw nearer to it, till we find that trailing meteor is something like a light in a window or a candle in a room.
PART TWO: PARTICULAR BOOKS AND WRITERS
THE MACBETHS
IN STUDYING any eternal tragedy the first question necessarily is what part of tragedy is eternal. If there be any element in man’s work which is in any sense permanent it must have this characteristic, that it rebukes first one generation and then another, but rebukes them always in opposite directions and for opposite faults. The ideal world is always sane. The real world is always mad. But it is mad about a different thing every time; all the things that have been are changing and inconstant. The only thing that is really reliable is the thing that has never been. All very great classics of art are a rebuke to extravagance not in one direction but in all directions. The figure of a Greek Venus is a rebuke to the fat women of Rubens and also a rebuke to the thin women of Aubrey Beardsley. In the same way, Christianity, which in its early years fought the Manicheans because they did not believe in anything but spirit, has now to fight the Manicheans because they do not believe in anything but matter. This is perhaps the test of a very great work of classic creation, that it can be attacked on inconsistent grounds, and that it attacks its enemies on inconsistent grounds. Here is a broad and simple test. If you hear a thing being accused of being too tall and too short, too red and too green, too bad in one way and too bad also in the opposite way, then you may be sure that it is very good.
This preface is essential if we are to profit by the main meaning of Macbeth. For the play is so very great that it covers much more than it appears to cover; it will certainly survive our age as it has survived its own; it will certainly leave the twentieth century behind as calmly and completely as it has left the seventeenth century behind. Hence if we ask for the meaning of this classic we must necessarily ask the meaning for our own time. It might have another shade of meaning for another period of time. If, as is possible, there should be a barbaric return and if history is any kind of guide, it will destroy everything else before it destroys great literature. The high and civilized sadness of Virgil was enjoyed literally through the darkest instant of the Dark Ages. Long after a wealthier generation has destroyed Parliament they will retain Shakespeare. Men will enjoy the greatest tragedy of Shakespeare even in the thick of the greatest tragedy of Europe.
It is quite possible that Shakespeare may come to be enjoyed by men far simpler than the men for whom he wrote. Voltaire called him a great savage; we may come to the time far darker than the Dark Ages when he will really be enjoyed by savages. Then the story of Macbeth will be read by a man in the actual position of Macbeth. Then the Thane of Glamis may profit by the disastrous superstitions of the Thane of Cawdor. Then the Thane of Cawdor may really resist the impulse to be King of Scotland. There would be a very simple but a real moral if Macbeth could read Macbeth. “Do not listen to evil spirits; do not let your ambition run away with you; do not murder old gentlemen in bed; do not kill other people’s wives and children as a part of diplomacy; for if you do these things it is highly probable that you will have a bad time.” That is the lesson that Macbeth would have learnt from Macbeth; that is the lesson that some barbarians of the future may possibly learn from Macbeth. And it is a true lesson. Great work has something to say quite simply to the simple. The barbarians would understand Macbeth as a solid warning against vague and violent ambition; and it is such a warning, and they would take along with it this lesson also, which is none the worse because perhaps only the barbarians could adequately understand it. “Distrust those malevolent spirits who speak flatteringly to you. They are not benevolent spirits; if they were they would be more likely to beat you about the head.”
Before we talk then of the lesson of a great work of art, let us realize that it has a different lesson for different ages, because it is itself eternal. And let us realize that such a lesson will be in our own day not absolute but suited to the particular vices or particular misfortunes of that day. We are not in any danger at the moment of the positive and con crete actions which correspond to those of Macbeth. The good old habit of murdering kings (which was the salvation of so many commonwealths in the past) has fallen into desuetude. The idea of such a play must be for us (and for our sins) more subtle. The idea is more subtle but it is almost inexpressibly great. Let us before reading the play consider if only for a moment what is the main idea of Macbeth for modern men.
One great idea on which all tragedy builds is the idea of the continuity of human life. The one thing a man cannot do is exactly what all modern artists and free lovers are always trying to do. He cannot cut his life up into separate sections. The case of the modern claim for freedom in love is the first and most obvious that occurs to the mind; therefore I use it for this purpose of illustration. You cannot have an idyll with Maria and an episode with Jane; there is no such thing as an episode. There is no such thing as an idyll. It is idle to talk about abolishing the tragedy of marriage when you cannot abolish the tragedy of sex. Every flirtation is a marriage; it is a marriage in this frightful sense; that it is irrevocable. I have taken this case of sexual relations as one out of a hundred; but of any case in human life the thing is true. The basis of all tragedy is that man lives a coherent and continuous life. It is only a worm that you can cut in two and leave the severed parts still alive. You can cut a worm up into episodes and they are still living episodes. You can cut a worm up into idylls and they are quite brisk and lively idylls. You can do all this to him precisely because he is a worm. You cannot cut a man up and leave him kicking, precisely because he is a man. We know this because man even in his lowest and darkest manifestation has always this characteristic of physical and psychological unity. His identity continues long enough to see the end of many of his own acts; he cannot be cut off from his past with a hatchet; as he sows so shall he reap.
This then is the basis of all tragedy, this living and perilous continuity which does not exist in the lower creatures. This is the basis of all tragedy, and this is certainly the basis of Macbeth. The great ideas of Macbeth, uttered in the first few scenes with a tragic energy which has never been equalled perhaps in Shakespeare or out of him, is the idea of the enormous mistake a man makes if he supposes that one decisive act will clear his way. Macbeth’s ambition, though selfish and someway sullen, is not in itself criminal or morbid. He wins the title of Glamis in honourable war; he deserves and gets the title of Cawdor; he is rising in the world and has a not ignoble exhilaration in doing so. Suddenly a new ambition is presented to him (of the agency and atmosphere which presents it I shall speak in a moment) and he realizes that nothing lies across his path to the Crown of Scotland except the sleeping body of Duncan. If he does that one cruel thing, he can be infinitely kind and happy.
Here, I say, is the first and most formidable of the great actualities of Macbeth. You cannot do a mad thing in order to reach sanity. Macbeth’s mad resolve is not a cure even for his own irresolution. He was indecisive before his decision. He is, if possible, more indecisive after he has decided. The crime does not get rid of the problem. Its effect is so bewildering that one may say that the crime does not get rid of the temptation. Make a morbid decision and you will only become more morbid; do a lawlesss thing and you will only get into an atmosphere much more suffocating than that of law. Indeed, it is a mistake to speak of a man as ‘breaking out.’ The lawless man never breaks out; he breaks in. He smashes a door and finds himself in another room, he smashes a wall and finds himself in a yet smaller one. The more he shatters the more his habitation shrinks. Where he ends you may read in the end of Macbeth.
For us moderns, therefore, the first philosophical significance of the play is this; that our life is one thing and that our lawless acts limit us; every time we break a law we make a limitation. In some strange way hidden in the deeps of human psychology, if we build our palace on some unknown wrong it turns very slowly into our prison. Macbeth at the end of the play is not merely a wild beast; he is a caged wild beast. But if this is the thing to be put in a primary position there is something else that demands at least our second one. The second idea in the main story of Macbeth is, of course, that of the influence of evil suggestion upon the soul, particularly evil suggestion of a mystical and transcendental kind. In this connection the mystical character of the promptings is not more interesting than the mystical character of the man to whom they are especially sent. Mystical promptings are naturally sweet to a mystic. The character of Macbeth in this regard has been made the matter of a great deal of brilliant and futile discussion. Some critics have represented him as a burly silent soldier because he won battles for his country. Other critics have represented him as a feverish and futile decadent because he makes long practical speeches full of the most elaborate imagery. In the name of commonsense let it be remembered that Shakespeare lived before the time when unsuccessful poets thought it poetical to be decadent and unsuccessful soldiers thought it military to be silent. Men like Sidney and Raleigh and Essex could have fought as well as Macbeth and could have ranted as well as Macbeth. Why should Shakespeare shrink from making a great general talk poetry when half the great generals of his time actually wrote great poetry?
The whole legend, therefore, which some critics have based on the rich rhetoric of Macbeth: the legend that Macbeth was a febrile and egotistical coward because he liked the sound of his own voice, may be dismissed as a manifestation of the diseases of later days. Shakespeare meant Macbeth for a fine orator for he made fine speeches; he also meant him for a fine soldier because he made him not only win battles bravely but what is much more to the point, lose battles bravely; he made him, when overwhelmed by enemies in heaven and earth, die the death of a hero. But Macbeth is meant to be among other things an orator and a poet; and it is to Macbeth in this capacity that the evil supernatural appeal is made. If there be any such thing as evil influences coming from beyond the world, they have never been so suggestively indicated as they are here. They appeal, as evil always does, to the existence of a coherent and comprehensible scheme. It is the essence of a nightmare that it turns the whole cosmos against us. Two of their prophecies have been fulfilled; may it not be assumed then that the third will also be fulfilled?
Also they appeal, as evil always does (being slavish itself and believing all men slaves) to the inevitable. They put Macbeth’s good fortune before him as if it were not so much a fortune as a fate. In the same way imperialists sought to salve the consciences of Englishmen by giving them the offer of gold and empire with all the gloom of predestination. When the devil, and the witches who are the servants of the devil, wish to make a weak man snatch a crown that does not belong to him, they are too cunning to come to him and say “Will you be King?” They say without further parley, “All hail, Macbeth, that shall be king hereafter”. This weakness Macbeth really has; that he is easily attracted by that kind of spiritual fatalism which relieves the human creature of a great part of his responsibility. In this way there is a strange and sinister appropriateness in the way in which the promises of the evil spirits end in new fantasies; end, so to speak, as mere diabolical jokes. Macbeth accepts as a piece of unreasoning fate first his crime and then his crown. It is appropriate that this fate which he has accepted as external and irrational should end in incidents of mere extravagant bathos, in the walking forest and strange birth of Macduff. He has once surrendered himself with a kind of dark and evil faith, to a machinery of destiny that he can neither respect nor understand, and it is the proper sequel of this that the machinery should produce a situation which crushes him as something useless.
Shakespeare does not mean that Macbeth’s emotionalism and rich rhetoric prove him to be unmanly in any ordinary sense. But Shakespeare does mean, I think, to suggest that the man, virile in his essential structure, has this weak spot in his artistic temperament; that fear of the mere strength of destiny and of unknown spirits, of their strength as apart from their virtue, which is the only proper significance of the word superstition. No man can be superstitious who loves his God, even if the god be Mumbo Jumbo. Macbeth has something of this fear and fatalism; and fatalism is exactly the point at which rationalism passes silently into superstition. Macbeth, in short, has any amount of physical courage, he has even a great deal of moral courage. But he lacks what may be called spiritual courage; he lacks a certain freedom and dignity of the human soul in the universe, a freedom and dignity which one of the scriptural writers expresses as the difference between the servants and the sons of God.
But the man Macbeth and his marked but inadequate manliness, can only be expressed in connection with the character of his wife. And the question of Lady Macbeth immediately arouses again the controversies that have surrounded this play. Miss Ellen Terry and Sir Henry Irving acted Macbeth upon the theory that Macbeth was a feeble and treacherous man and that Lady Macbeth was a frail and clinging woman. A somewhat similar view of Lady Macbeth has been, I believe, consistently uttered by a distinguished American actress. The question as commonly stated, in short, is the question of whether Macbeth was really masculine, and second, of whether Lady Macbeth was not really feminine. The old critics assumed that because Lady Macbeth obviously ruled her husband she must have been a masculine woman. The whole inference of course is false. Masculine women may rule the Borough Council, but they never rule their husbands. The women who rule their husbands are the feminine women and I am entirely in accord with those who think that Lady Macbeth must have been a very feminine woman. But while some critics rightly insist on the feminine character of Lady Macbeth they endeavour to deprive Macbeth of that masculine character which is obviously the corollary of the other. They think Lady Macbeth must be a man because she rules. And on the same idiotic principle they think that Macbeth must be a woman or a coward or a decadent or something odd because he is ruled. The most masculine kind of man always is ruled. As a friend of mine once said, very truly, physical cowards are the only men who are not afraid of women.
The real truth about Macbeth and his wife is somewhat strange but cannot be too strongly stated. Nowhere else in all his wonderful works did Shakespeare describe the real character of the relations of the sexes so sanely, or so satisfactorily as he describes it here. The man and the woman are never more normal than they are in this abnormal and horrible story. Romeo and Juliet does not better describe love than this describes marriage. The dispute that goes on between Macbeth and his wife about the murder of Duncan is almost word for word a dispute which goes on at any suburban breakfast-table about something else. It is merely a matter of changing “Infirm of purpose, give me the daggers”, into “infirm of purpose, give me the postage stamps”. And it is quite a mistake to suppose that the woman is to be called masculine or even in any exclusive sense strong. The strengths of the two partners differ in kind. The woman has more of that strength on the spot which is called industry. The man has more of that strength in reserve which is called laziness.
But the acute truth of this actual relation is much deeper even than that. Lady Macbeth exhibits one queer and astounding kind of magnanimity which is quite peculiar to women. That is, she will take something that her husband dares not do but which she knows he wants to do and she will become more fierce for it than he is. For her, as for all very feminine souls (that is, very strong ones) selfishness is the only thing which is acutely felt as sin; she will commit any crime if she is not committing it only for herself. Her husband thirsts for the crime egotistically and therefore vaguely, darkly, and subconsciously, as a man becomes conscious of the beginnings of physical thirst. But she thirsts for the crime altruistically and therefore clearly and sharply, as a man perceives a public duty to society. She puts the thing in plain words, with an acceptance of extremes. She has that perfect and splendid cynicism of women which is the most terrible thing God has made. I say it without irony and without any undue enjoyment of the slight element of humour.
If you want to know what are the permanent relations of the married man with the married woman you cannot read it anywhere more accurately than in the little domestic idyll of Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth. Of a man so male and a woman so female, I cannot believe anything except that they ultimately save their souls. Macbeth was strong in every masculine sense up to the very last moment; he killed himself in battle. Lady Macbeth was strong in the very female sense which is perhaps a more courageous sense; she killed herself, but not in battle. As I say, I cannot think that souls so strong and so elemental have not retained those permanent possibilities of humility and gratitude which ultimately place the soul in heaven. But wherever they are they are together. For alone among so many of the figures of human fiction, they are actually married.
THE TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR
THE TRAGEDY of King Lear, on some of its elements perhaps the very greatest of all the Shakespearian tragedies, is relatively seldom played. It is even possible to have a dark suspicion that it is not universally read; with the usual deplorable result; that it is universally quoted. Perhaps nothing has done so much to weaken the greatest of English achievements, and to leave it open to facile revolt or fatigued reaction, than the abominable habit of quoting Shakespeare without reading Shakespeare. It has encouraged all the pompous theatricality which first created an idolatry and then an iconoclasm; all that florid tradition in which old playgoers and after dinner-speakers talked about the Bard or the Swan of Avon, until it was comparatively easy, at the end of the Victorian era, for somebody like Bernard Shaw to propose an Edwardian massacre of Bards and almost to insinuate that the swan was a goose. Most of the trouble came from what are called ‘Familiar Quotations’, which were hardly even representative or self-explanatory quotations. In almost all the well-known passages from Shakespeare, to quote the passage is to miss the point. It is almost needless to note what may be called the vulgar examples; as in the case of those who say that Shakespeare asks, “What is in a name?”; which is rather like saying that Shakespeare says murder must be done, and it were best if it were done quickly. The popular inference always is that Shakespeare thought that names do not matter; there being possibly no man on God’s earth who was less likely to think so, than the man who made such magnificent mouthfuls out of mandragora and hurricanes, of the names of Hesperides or Hercules. The remark has no point, except in the purely personal circumstances in which it has poignancy, in the mouth of a girl commanded to hate a man she loves, because of a name that seems to her to have nothing to do with him. The play now under consideration is no exception to this disastrous rule. The old woman who complained that the tragedy of Hamlet was so full of quotations would have found almost as many in the tragedy of King Lear. And they would have had the same character as those from Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet: that those who leave out the context really leave out the conception. They have a mysterious power of making the world weary of a few fixed and disconnected words, and yet leaving the world entirely ignorant of the real meaning of those words.
Thus, in the play of King Lear, there are certain words which everybody has heard hundreds of times, in connections either intentionally or unintentionally absurd. We have all read or heard of somebody saying, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” Somehow the very words sound as if they were mouthed by some tipsy actor or silly and senile person in a comic novel. I do not know why these particular words, as words, should be selected for citation. Shakespeare was a casual writer; he was often especially careless about metaphors, careless about making them and careless about mixing them. There is nothing particularly notable about this particular metaphor of the tooth; it might just as well have been a wolf’s tooth or a tiger’s tooth. The lines quoted only become remarkable when we read them with the rest of the scene, and with a very much more remarkable passage, which is never quoted at all. The whole point of Lear’s remark is that, when buffeted by the first insult of Goneril, he breaks forth into a blasting bodily curse upon the woman, praying first that she may have no children, then that she may have horrible and unnatural children, that she may give birth to a monstrosity, that she may feel how, etc. Without that terrible implication, the serpent is entirely harmless and his teeth are drawn. I cannot imagine why only the weakest lines in the speech are everlastingly repeated, and the strongest lines in it are never mentioned at all.
A man might well harden into the horrid suspicion that most people have hardly read the play at all, when he remembers how many things there are in it that are not repeated, and yet would certainly be remembered. There are things in it that no man who has read them can ever forget. Amid all the thunders of the storm, it comes like a new clap of thunder, when the thought first crosses the mad king’s mind that he must not complain of wind and storm and lightning, because they are not his daughters. “I never gave you kingdoms, called you children.” And I imagine that the great imaginative invention of the English, the thing called Nonsense, never rose to such a height and sublimity of unreason and horror, as when the Fool juggles with time and space and tomorrow and yesterday, as he says soberly at the end of his rant: “This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.” This is one of the Shakespearian shocks or blows that take the breath away. But in the same scene of the storm and the desolate wandering, there is another example of the sort of thing I mean in the matter of quotation. It is not so strong an example, because the words are very beautiful in themselves; and have often been applied beautifully to pathetic human circumstances not unworthy of them. Nevertheless, they are something not only superior, but quite startlingly different, in the circumstances in which they really stand. We have all of us heard a hundred times that some unlucky law-breaker, or more or less pardonable profligate, was “more sinned against than sinning”. But the words thus used have not a hundredth part of the point and power of the words as used by Lear. The point of the passage is that he himself challenges the cosmic powers to a complete examination; that he finds in his despair a sort of dizzy detachment of the intellect, and strikes the balance to his own case with a kind of insane impartiality. Regarding the storm that rages round him as a universal rending and uprooting of everything, something that will pluck out the roots of all things, even the darkest and foulest roots of the heart of man deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, he affirms in the face of the most appalling self-knowledge, clear and blasting as the lightning, that his sufferings must still be greater than his sins. It is possibly the most tremendous thing a man ever said; whether or no any man had the right to say it. It would be hard to beat it even in the Book of Job. And it does weaken the particular strength of it that it should be used, however sympathetically, as a cheerful and charitable guess about the weaknesses of other people.
There are certain abstractions very strong in Shakespeare’s mind, without which his plays are much misunderstood by modern people, who look to them for nothing whatever except realistic details about individuals. For instance, there runs through the whole play of King Lear, as there runs through the whole play of Richard the Second, an abstraction which was an actuality of awful vividness to the man of Shakespeare’s time; the idea of the King. Under the name of Divine Right, a very unlucky name, it was mixed up with Parliamentary and sectarian quarrels which afterwards altogether dwarfed and diminished its dignity. But Divine Right was originally much more human than that. It resolved itself roughly into this; that there are three forms in which men can accept the idea of justice or the authority of the commonwealth; in the form of an assembly, in the form of a document, or in the form of a man. King Lear is a man; but he is or has been a sacramental or sacred man; and that is why he can be a desecrated man. Even those who prefer to be governed by the scroll of the law, or by the assembly of the tribe, must understand that men have wished, and may again wish, to be governed by a man; and that where this wish has existed the man does become, not indeed divine, but certainly different. It is not an accident that Lear is a king as well as a father, and that Goneril and Regan are not only daughters but traitors. Treason, or what is felt as treason, does break the heart of the world; and it has seldom been so nearly broken as here.
THE EVERLASTING NIGHTS
No one has any business with the Arabian Nights who objects to bulk in literature. It is a curious thing which may be noticed by all literary critics, that literature is the only thing in which bulk is considered a defect. The truth is, of course, that size is an element of value in literature. If the quality be really ascertained, the amount, even if indefinitely increased, becomes a merit. A man would as soon think of saying that the field was over-crowded with flowers, that the sky had a surplus population of stars, as of saying that there were too many good stories. The Arabian Nights is a collection of extraordinarily good stories, and while the modern aesthetic critic will probably find the book too long, the person with a taste for literature will find it too short. Surely the greatest compliment we can pay to it or any other book is to find it too short. This defect is the highest of all possible perfections.
Now length in the case of the Arabian Nights is not a mere material accident; it is one of the essential qualities, one of the essential virtues of the book. A short Arabian Nights is as unthinkable as a neat wilderness or a snug cathedral. The whole plan of the book is one vast conspiracy to entrap the reader into a condition of everlasting attention. By a supreme stroke of genius the compiler expressed this in the primary framework and outline. He made the teller of the stories a person inspired to prolong the stories infinitely by the devouring desire of life. It made the wish for an everlasting story one with the wish for an everlasting earthly existence. He made Scheherezade suddenly paralyze the tyrant when the sword was uplifted by a vision of all the stories that remained to be told in the world. She lured him into the golden and enchanted chamber of the first story and then the work was done. He could not get away from the puzzling and alluring sequence of that chain of tales, that endless series of delightful mantraps. Rooms within rooms opened their tempting and tantalizing doors, stories within stories promised a complicated and even confusing pleasure. The tyrant can sway kingdoms, and command multitudes, but he cannot discover exactly what happened to a fabulous prince or princess unless he asks for it. He has to wait, almost to fawn upon a wretched slave for the fag-end of an old tale. Never in any other book, perhaps, has such a splendid tribute been offered to the pride and omnipotence of art.
This is the real idea behind the Arabian Nights. The richness which first strikes the imagination in reading it is a mere symbol. The richness of gold, silver and jewels is a mere figure and representation of that which is the essential idea, the deep and enduring richness of life. The preciousness of emerald and amethyst and sandalwood is only the parable and expression of the preciousness of stones, dust, and dogs running in the streets. In the Arabian Nights everything has a story to tell. Three men come together; one is leading a gazelle, another a dog, another a mule. But the gazelle is an enchanted human being, the dog is a transformed brother, the mule is a man in unhuman shape. There is no traveller so dusty and commonplace that he may not have stories to tell of the terrible continents that lie upon the borderland of the world. There is no beggar so bent and abject that he may not have possession of a talisman which gives him power over the palaces and temples of princes. The possibilities of life are not to be counted. That is the profoundly practical moral buried in the Arabian Nights.
In our early Biblical lessons we were told that the Eastern teacher sat down to teach. There are not, perhaps, many points of resemblance between two such products of Oriental literature as The Book of Job and the Arabian Nights. But there is this in common between them, that we feel that both must have been narrated by somebody who was sitting down, while Ulysses the typical Greek, was toiling with oar and rudder to discover new isles and peninsulas, Job, the typical Jew, was reviewing the whole of heaven and earth while sitting on a dust-heap. Similarly, the Sultan of the Indies heard the tales of the four quarters of the earth while sitting on a cushion. The essential point, the essential lesson of these Oriental literatures is the clear and most moral lesson of idleness. Idleness is not a vice; in the old Chaucerian form of ‘idlesse’ it is a pleasure, and almost a virtue. Its true name is leisure. It is not a trifling with unimportant things, but a vision of all the innumerable important things in the universe which are in themselves even more important than bread and cheese.
Here again, therefore, we come near to one of the essential ideas which give their perennial charm to the Arabian Nights. It is the idea that idleness is not an empty thing. Idleness can be, and should be a particularly full thing, rich as it is in the Arabian Nights with invaluable jewels and incalculable stories. Idleness, or leisure, as the Eastern chronicler would probably prefer to call it, is indeed our opportunity of seeing the vision of all things, our rural audience for hearing, as the Sultan of the Indies heard them, the stories of all created things. In that hour, if we know how to use it, the tree tells its story to us, the stone in the road recites its memoirs, the lamp-post and the paling expatiate on their autobiographies. For as the most hideous nightmare in the world is an empty leisure, so the most enduring pleasure is a full leisure. We can defend ourselves, even on the Day of Judgment, if our work has been useless, with pleas of opportunity, competition and fulness of days.
AESOP’S FABLES
AESOP EMBODIES an epigram not uncommon in human history; his fame is all the more deserved because he never deserved it. The firm foundations of common sense, the shrewd shots of uncommon sense, that characterize all the Fables, belong not to him but to humanity. In the earliest human history, whatever is authentic is universal; and whatever is universal is anonymous. In such cases there is always some central man who had first the trouble of collecting these stories, and afterwards the fame of creating them. He had the fame; and, on the whole, he earned the fame. There must have been something great and human, something of the human future and the human past, in such a man; even if he only used it to rob the past or deceive the future. The story of Arthur may have been really connected with the most fighting Christianity of falling Rome or with the most heathen traditions hidden in the hills of Wales. But the word ‘Mappe’ or ‘Malory’ will always mean King Arthur; even though we find older and better origins than the Mabinogian; or write later and worse versions than the ‘Idylls of the King.’ The nursery fairy-tales may have come out of Asia with the Indo-European race, now fortunately extinct; they may have been invented by some fine French lady or gentlemen like Perrault: they may possibly even be what they profess to be. But we shall always call the best selection of such tales, ‘Grimm’s Tales’; simply because it is the best collection.
The historical Aesop, in so far as he was historical, would seem to have been a Phrygian slave, or at least one not to be specially and symbolically adorned with the Phrygian cap of liberty. He lived, if he did live, about the sixth century before Christ, in the time of that Croesus whose story we love and suspect like everything else in Herodotus. There are also stories of deformity of feature and a ready ribaldry of tongue; stories which (as the celebrated Cardinal said) explain, though they do not excuse, his having been hurled over a high precipice at Delphi. It is for those who read the Fables to judge whether he was really thrown over the cliff for being ugly and offensive, or rather for being highly moral and correct. But there is no kind of doubt that the general legend of him may justly rank him with a race too easily forgotten in our modern comparisons; the race of the great philosophic slaves. Aesop may have been a fiction like Uncle Remus; he was also, like Uncle Remus, a fact. It is a fact that slaves in the old world could be worshipped like Aesop, or loved like Uncle Remus. It is odd to note that both the great slaves told their best stories about beasts and birds.
But whatever be fairly due to Aesop, the human tradition called Fables is not due to him. This had gone on long before any sarcastic freedman from Phrygia had or had not been flung off a precipice; this has remained long after. It is to our advantage, indeed, to realize the distinction; because it makes Aesop more obviously effective than any other fabulist. Grimm’s Tales, glorious as they are, were collected by two German students; at least we know more about them than we know about a Phrygian slave. The truth is, of course, that Aesop’s Fables are not Aesop’s fables, any more than Grimm’s Fairy-Tales were ever Grimm’s fairy-tales. But the fable and the fairy-tale are things utterly distinct. There are many elements of difference; but the plainest is plain enough. There can be no good fable with human beings in it. There can be no good fairy-tale without them.
Aesop, or Babrius (or whatever his name was), understood that, for a fable, all the persons must be impersonal. They must be like abstractions in algebra, or like pieces in chess. The lion must always be stronger than the wolf, just as four is always double of two. The fox in a fable must move crooked, as the knight in chess must move crooked. The sheep in a fable must march on, as the pawn in chess must march on. The fable must not allow for the crooked captures of the pawn; it must not allow for what Balzac called “the revolt of a sheep.” The fairy-tale, on the other hand, absolutely revolves on the pivot of human personality. If no hero were there to fight the dragons, we should not even know that they were dragons. If no adventurer were cast on the undiscovered island—it would remain undiscovered. If the miller’s third son does not find the enchanted garden where the seven princesses stand white and frozen— why then, they will remain white and frozen and enchanted. If there is no personal prince to find the Sleeping Beauty she will simply sleep. Fables repose upon quite the opposite idea: that everything is itself, and will in any case speak for itself. The wolf will be always selfish; the fox will be always foxy. Something of the same sort may have been meant by the animal worship, in which Egyptian and Indian and many other great people have combined. Men do not, I think, love beetles or cats or crocodiles with a wholly personal love; they salute them as expressions of that abstract and anonymous energy in nature which to any one is awful, and to an atheist must be frightful. So in all the fables that are or are not Aesop’s all the animal forces drive like inanimate forces, like great rivers or growing trees. It is the limit and the loss of all such things that they cannot be anything but themselves; it is their tragedy that they could not lose their souls.
This is the immortal justification of the Fable; that we could not teach the plainest truths so simply without turning men into chessmen. We cannot talk of such simple things without using animals that do not talk at all. Suppose, for a moment, that you turn the wolf into a selfish baron, or the fox into a foxy diplomatist, you will at once remember that even barons are human, you will be unable to forget that even diplomatists are men. You will always be looking for that accidental good humour that should go with the brutality of any brutal man; for that allowance for all delicate things, including virtue, that should exist in any good diplomatist. Once put a thing on two legs instead of four and pluck it of feathers and you cannot help asking for a human being, either heroic, as in the fairy-tales, or unheroic, as in the modern novels.
But by using animals in this austere and arbitrary style as they are used on the shields of heraldry or the hieroglyphics of the ancients, men have really succeeded in handing down those tremendous truths that are called truisms. If the chivalric lion be red and rampant, it is rigidly red and rampant; if the sacred ibis stands anywhere on one leg, it stands on one leg for ever. In this language, like a large animal alphabet, are written some of the first philosophic certainties of men. As the child learns A for Ass or B for Bull or C for Cow, so man has learnt here to connect the simpler and stronger creatures with the simpler and stronger truths. That a flowing stream cannot befoul its own fountain, and that any one who says it does is a tyrant and a liar; that a mouse is too weak to fight a lion, but too strong for the cords that can hold a lion; that a fox who gets most out of a flat dish may easily get least out of a deep dish; that the crow whom the gods forbid to sing, the gods nevertheless provide with cheese; that when the goat insults from a mountain-top it is not the goat that insults, but the mountain; all these are deep truths deeply graven on the rocks wherever men have passed. It matters nothing how old they are, or how new; they are the alphabet of humanity, which like so many forms of primitive picture-writing employs any living symbol in preference to man. These ancient and universal tales are all of animals; as the latest discoveries in the oldest prehistoric caverns are all of animals. Man, in his simpler stories, always felt that he himself was something too mysterious to be drawn. But the legend he carved under these cruder symbols was everywhere the same; and whether fables began with Aesop or began with Adam, whether they were German and medieval as Reynard the Fox, or as French and Renaissance as La Fontaine, the upshot is everywhere essentially the same; that pride goes before a fall; and that there is such a thing as being too clever by half. You will not find any other legend but this written upon the rocks by any hand of man. There is every type and time of fable; but there is only one moral to the fable; because there is only one moral to everything.
BOTH SIDES OF THE LOOKING-GLASS
WE ALL say comparisons are odious, and I wonder whether any of us know why. In the abstract, comparison is only a way of testing degrees and qualities, like the zoologist who thought it an exact and exhaustive description of a giraffe to say that “he is taller than an elephant, but not so thick”. There is nothing in this to indicate any odium—to suggest that he was cruel to wild elephants or unduly spoiled and petted his giraffes. But when we pass from nature to human nature, comparison does always sound like a depreciation. I think the reason is this: that for some cause, possibly original sin, we have a very weak supply of words of praise as compared with our rich and varied output of terms of abuse. We can call the unpleasant scholar or intellectual a pedant or a prig, but we have no special word for the pleasant sort of scholar or intellectual. We can call the wrong sort of society person a snob, but we have no special name for the right sort of society person. Thus we are driven to the ghastly necessity, for instance, of calling our friends ‘nice’. Fancy calling Dr. Johnson ‘nice’, and Fox ‘nice’, and Nelson ‘nice’. It does not present very vivid or varied portraits.
I have been reading, side by side, two books about men who were both ‘nice’, and whose books were ‘nice’. They were the two great nineteenth-century tellers of tales to children. They were also as flatly contrary to each other at every point as two men could be, but if I go beyond calling them both ‘nice’ and try to compare them or say what they were like, it will quite certainly sound as though I were praising one and blaming the other. This is simply because we cannot vary praise as we vary blame. One of these men was Charles Dodgson, commonly known as Lewis Carroll, a don at Oxford and a very Victorian English clergyman, the other was Hans Christian Andersen, a queer, cranky and visionary Danish peasant, and the author of immortal tales.
When I say that Lewis Carroll was very Victorian, that will sound like a reproach, though it ought to be a compliment as well as a reproach—only it is so much more difficult to find words to fit what was good in Victorian England than what was bad in it. If I say that Dodgson the don was conventional or comfortable or respectable, compared with Andersen the peasant, those words will sound like unfriendly words, but only because there are no friendly words to express the really friendly things that often do go along with conventions and comforts.
It is abominably stupid to call the Victorian Age merely conventional and comfortable, and to forget the fact that it produced a new kind of poetry which was supremely wild and supremely innocent. It was the poetry of pure nonsense, which has never been known in the world before and may never be known again. Lewis Carroll was not the only example: Edward Lear, I think, was a better one; and I would put in a word for the ‘Katawampus’ and other stories of Judge Parry, that children loved at least as much. Lewis Carroll’s letters to children prove that not only did he love children, but that children loved him; nevertheless I believe his intellectual attacks were directed to adults. Everything in Lewis Carroll is part of what he called the Game of Logic; it is very Victorian, by the way, to think of logic as a game. The Victorians had to invent a sort of impossible paradise in which to indulge in good logic: for all serious things they preferred bad logic. This is not paradoxical, or at any rate, it was they who made the paradox. Macaulay and Bagehot and all their teachers taught them that the British Constitution ought to be illogical— they called it being practical. Read the great Reform Bill and then read Alice in Wonderland—you will be struck by the resemblance of Alice in Wonderland. They had to go to fairyland to be logical. Thus I suspect that the very best of Lewis Carroll was not written by a man for children, but by a don for dons. The most brilliant strokes are not only mathematical, but mature. Ten lectures against the heresy of mere Relativity could be based on that one perfect sentence, “I have seen hills compared with which that would be a valley.”
But it may be questioned whether the little girls he wrote for were tortured by relativist scepticism. And, in a way, this is part of the glory of Lewis Carroll. He was not only teaching children to stand on their heads; but he was also teaching dons to stand on their heads. It is a good test of a head to stand on it. When the Victorians wanted a holiday, they made one, a real intellectual holiday. They did create a world which, to me at least, is still a sort of strange home, a secret holiday, a world in which monsters, terrifying in other fairy-tales, were turned into pets. Nothing will deprive them of the glory of it. It was nonsense for nonsense’s sake. If we ask where this magic mirror was found the answer is that it was found among very padded Victorian furniture: in other words, it was due to the historical accident by which Dodgson and Oxford and England were, at that moment, very comfortable and secure. They knew there would be no fighting, except the party system, in which Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle, the battle being much less obvious than the agreement. They knew their England could not see invasion or revolution; they knew it was growing richer by commerce; they did not realize that agriculture was dying, possibly because it was already dead; they had no peasants.
They found their flat contrary in that other great lover of children, whose story is told admirably in The Life of Hans Christian Andersen by Signe Toksvig. Hans Andersen was himself a peasant, and came of what is still a country of peasants. In a thousand ways, Hans Andersen represented the exact opposite of the sheltered don in his cushioned Victorian drawing-room. Hans was open to all the winds that blew, like a peasant on his fields, like a peasant on the European battlefields. He grew up anyhow, full of a sort of pathetic and greedy ambition, such as dons at Oxford do not show. He had experienced all realities, including his own weakness and his own desires. He did a hundred things, idiotic things, which Mr. Dodgson would have found unthinkable; but because he was a peasant he had his compensations. He remained in touch with the enormous tradition of the earth in the matter of mystery and glamour—he did not have to make a new and rather artificial sort of fairy-tale out of triangles and syllogisms.
Hans Andersen was not only an uncle loved by children, he was a child. He was one of those great children of our Christian past who have had the Divine favour which is called arrested development. His faults were the faults of a child—and very annoying faults they were. Why do aged men after reading this book, love Hans Andersen? I answer, because the most lovable thing in the world is humility. Now Hans Andersen had a vast vanity, which was founded on humility. I know that modern psychologists have called the combination an inferiority complex—but there is always an element of humility in the man who does not conceal his vanity.
Nobody ever made it so naked and shameless as poor Hans Andersen. But my intention here is only to stir such thoughts as are aroused by those contrasted types, neither of which, I hope, will ever be forgotten as nursery classics. Both had many imitators, I hope I shall not be misunderstood if I say that Hans Andersen was perhaps even greater, because he was himself an imitator. That great peasant, that great poet in prose, had the peasant quality which the Victorians had lost—the old mystical feeling about the ordinary materials of life. Hans Andersen would have found more on this side of the looking-glass than Alice found on the other. Beyond are fantastic mathematical projections; but why go through the looking-glass when all the rest of the furniture, all the chairs and tables, can be animated by elves?
My comparisons are becoming odious. It is because there is no variation in verbal praise. Differentation sounds like depreciation. Which is better; to have distilled from the dense commercial solidity of the modern world a wild new wine or honey of intellectual nonsense, or to have enlarged that large and magnificent accumulation of popular imagination in the past, and to have made again, with an original note, the great fairy-tale that is really a folk-tale? I only know that if you try to deprive me of either of them, there will be a row.
AND SO TO BED
I WILL not say that the Englishman is the most subtle of all the beasts of the field; for he is obviously not a beast, still less a snake, and least of all a devil. But it is true that he is in many ways the most complex type in Christendom. He is never so complex as when he is not entirely conscious; and especially when the last twist of his labyrinthine complexity takes the form of claiming to be simple; to be rough and tough and bluff like Major Bagstock. And one of the weirdest things about him is the subconscious or semi-conscious art and skill, with which he arranges history and human facts so as to soothe and satisfy himself, without quite clearly realising what he is doing or why he is doing it. In truth, the Englishman is the one man really made for psycho-analysis. He really does instinctively erect screens and scenery, half symbolic and half secretive, to protect a hidden thought. All these things filtered through my mind in reading Mr. Arthur Bryant’s excellent last volume on Pepys: “Samuel Pepys: The Years of Peril”.
Nine men out of ten in this country, above the most unlettered class, could tell you with some confidence who Pepys was. He was a funny fellow who kept a Diary. He was a roguish fellow, and the fun of his Diary consists chiefly in his confessions of infidelity to a wife, or flirtations with a chambermaid. He wrote in quaint short sentences, often parodied in the newspapers; and he ended as many entries as possible with the phrase, “and so to bed”. Now it is a very queer thing that this should be so universally known, and that nothing else about the same man should be known at all. For this mildly scandalous journal was only kept for a short time, comparatively early in his life; and even so the proportion of scandal is exaggerated. There were not many men in England then, or possibly now, whose sincere confessions in youth would be very different. Meanwhile, the rest of his life was a public life of practical usefulness and profound importance. He, with about one other man, made modern England a great naval power. The reply, it will be generally supposed, is that the public heard of the Diary first, long ago, while curious scholars have lately dug up the details about the permanent official. But in mere common sense, the case is exactly the other way. The Diary was kept in a close cipher, apparently impenetrable and long unpenetrated. But the political life of Pepys had been no more private than the public life of Cromwell or Cardinal Wolsey. Political foes tried to impeach him as openly as Warren Hastings in Westminster Hall; that he might be executed as openly as Charles I at Whitehall. In the famous phrase of the Regicide, this thing was not done in a corner. His foes were the first men of the age, like Shaftesbury and Halifax; and they filled the streets with mobs of the Brisk Boys with the Green Ribbons, roaring for the blood of such servants of the Crown. And the roguish little fellow of the Diary stood up under that storm and steered like a ship the policy that has launched the ships of England. He fought for a fighting fleet, more or less of the modern model, exactly as Cobden fought for Free Trade or Gladstone for Home Rule. And he did not write anything corresponding to “and so to bed” till he had seen those ships make their harbour. Now why is that most exciting passage in patriotic history practically left out of our rather too patriotic histories? Why is the hero of it known only as a buffoon winking at a maidservant? There is no reason that can be called simple, in the sense of superficial. Pepys was a very normal national man; Protestant like any other and as insular as most. Englishmen, especially English historians, are excessively devoted to what is national and very particularly to what is novel. And it is hardly exaggerative to say he could have written “Samuel Pepys”, like the signature of a craftsman or architect, under the word Victory where it shone upon the ship of Nelson.
There is only one explanation. There can be no other; and it is simply this. You cannot praise the patriotism of Pepys without also praising the patriotism of James II, then James, Duke of York. You cannot tell the story at all, without letting it stand out with startling clearness that Samuel Pepys the Protestant might never have started work, and would certainly never have done the work, without the devoted practical support, and even prompting, of James Stuart the Papist. And his story had to be told so as to enforce only one moral; that Papistry was the enemy of Patriotism. In plain words, you have to admit that the prince, who did more than any other to enable Britannia to rule the waves, was the same Prince who was driven across the same waves into exile, simply and solely because he was a Roman Catholic. And that was more than the English historians dared to admit; merely to do justice to the patriotism of a poor little Government official. That single catastrophe, in the way of letting the Catholic cat out of the Protestant bag, would have turned upside-down the whole orthodox official academic History of England.
But the point is, as I have said, that the thing is almost unthinkably subtle, often semi-conscious; and at once collective and secretive. It is a sort of vague but repeated gesture (like that of somebody stroking the cat) which has gradually put all this lively part of history to sleep; and moulded the story so as to soothe the successful side. There is no veto on studying the period; no overt official command to take a certain line; there was simply an instinct to take the line of least resistance. The main facts of the time were seldom even contradicted; they were only neglected. And I can imagine with what a stare of simple wonder I should be regarded, by the man in the street, who is quite willing to talk to me about Pepys, if I said there was a sort of conspiracy to connect Pepys only with his Diary. Is not the Diary a very amusing book? Yes. Was not Pepys a Protestant? Yes. Do we not generally praise patriots, especially Protestant patriots? Yes. But if Pitt or Palmerston or Disraeli had written a very amusing Diary, people would discuss each statesman with reference to his statesmanship; and then say, “I always think he is most delightful in his Diary. Have you read his Diary?”
By this vast vague corporate craft or silent strategy, there has been built up in this country a quite abnormal condition of mental and moral Comfort. And we know, because Mr. Winston Churchill tells us in the Strand Magazine, that we have a noble Parliament and more freedom than any foreigners; and a poor man has as much chance as a rich man in our courts of law. And so to bed.
AS LARGE AS LIFE IN DICKENS
NOTHING IS more characteristic of Dickens, nothing has so handicapped him with the languid modern reader as the vast crowding of his stage with innumerable and bewilderingly well-painted characters. He has passed through a period in which it has been customary among certain people to deride him; but the whole indifference to Dickens has arisen from the strange idea that literature should copy life. While realism was in full swing it was easy to point out that no person ever existed so horrible as Quilp, or so grandiloquent as Snodgrass, or unscrupulous as Ralph Nickleby, so entirely pathetic as Little Nell. But we have tired of realism. We have suddenly awakened to the fact that art has nothing to do with copying. It is strange, but true, that the same movement and discovery which has been the justification of Aubrey Beardsley has been the justification of Dickens.
Dickens, of course, has been a great deal handicapped by the common habit among his admirers of praising him for the wrong things. He is praised for being ‘true to life’, while his true merit is not that he is true to life, but alive. It is common to hear a man say when Dickens is accused of exaggeration, “I have met a man exactly like Pecksniff.” Of course, to begin with, he has not met a person like Pecksniff any more than he has met one like Caliban. And further, if he had met a man exactly like Pecksniff, it would go far to show that Dickens was not a great novelist. Since no two men in real life are exactly like each other, so no fictitious character ought to be exactly like a real character. He ought to be an addition to the existing stock of real characters. His passions and traditions, his instincts and memories, should be blended together in entirely new quantities into an entirely new colour never seen before from the beginning upon the palette of life. If it be true (as I believe it is) that no person precisely like Mrs. Micawber ever existed or ever will exist in the whole domain of the universe, then we know that Mrs. Micawber is like life. We know that Dickens created as Life itself creates.
This is the far higher sense in which great art is ‘like life’, far higher, that is, than the ordinary sense in which the phrase is used. Great literature is like life. Not because it is accurate to the leaves on the tree and the pattern on the carpet and the words men actually employ; it is like life because it has in it the exuberant energy of life, its power of production, its sense of hope and memory, its consciousness of an almost immortal vitality. Great literature, in short, is like life because it also is living. An admirer of Dickens, therefore, ought to be ashamed of defending the great master by pretending that he did not exaggerate. He exaggerated by the same living law which makes the birds chatter in pairing time or the kitten fight with its own tail. The passion behind all his work was joy, and the final touch of exaggeration is the absolute necessity of the great literature of joy.
This mistake about Dickens arose, of course, because a critical generation had forgotten altogether that there even was such a thing as the great literature of joy. We have fallen into the way of thinking that literature is a refuge for weak temperaments, that literature may express all the darker and quainter moods, all the moods of regret or rebellion or hesitation, but never that one universal mood, streaming like a river through heaven and earth, by which alone all things consent to live. Dickens has seemed to us vulgar and impossible, and sprawlingly inartistic, for the simple reason that he is too strong for us. His bewildering crowds and mobs of characters, his vast mazy travels over England and America, his endless banquets and conversations, his intense realism and his frantic unreality, are all manifestations of a quite insatiable and omnivorous power of mental pleasure to which our period has lost the key. He was the last of the great comic writers; since his time we have lost the power of realizing the connection between the words ‘great’ and ‘comic’. We have forgotten that Aristophanes and Rabelais stand with Aeschylus and Dante; that their folly was wiser and more solid than our wisdom, and that their levity has outlasted a hundred philosophies. Dickens exaggerates, and it is not a fault but a merit; it is of the same kind as the exaggerations of the great French humorist, whose vigorous and almost monstrous power of happiness was only contented with a giant who could lift his head above Notre Dame and ride away with the bells upon his bridle. Therefore Dickens has become to the orthodox artistic world of today what Rabelais has become to many of the modern schools— a thing obscure with excess of jesting, a positive darkness of joy.
There are many evidences that the great truth and passion behind the work of Dickens was this sense of joy in things; just as much as the great truth and passion behind Thackeray was a sense of their almost sacred pathos, or the great truth and passion behind Hawthorne a sense of their weird significance. But the best evidence of all lies in the fact that Dickens was never so triumphantly successful as in describing the type of man whose existence in this world, in which he has neither money nor honour, seems to depend entirely on his high spirits and his capacity for realizing the magnificence of the flying moment. All Dickens’ sticks of heroes and dolls of heroines may, of course, be thrown aside: the real ideal figure of Dickens is William Micawber. Dick Swiveller, his next best character, is a man of the same type; they both represent a kind of shabby poet, whose continual lack of money and utter antagonism to the order of society can never kill him, because of his everlasting pleasure in old memories and very old quotations. They have alike the same mutability, the same impecuniosity, the same florid, but genuine, taste in literature, the same continual and crushing misfortunes, the same mysterious, but unbreakable, immortality. They are never ended, because, fools and rascals as they are they hold on to something which belongs, not to society but to the soul: the power of joy. And note here that Dickens, describing these men who are nearest to his heart, is not only vigorous, living and entertaining, as he always is, but far truer to the facts even than is his wont. Pecksniff is a spirited and amusing bogey for a pure farce, but such a hypocrite never lived in this mean earth; we shall meet him in a better and bolder world. Mr. Squeers is a good, black grotesque figure from the outside, but he has no inside. But Micawber and Swiveller (especially the latter) are true to the tenor of life; they see the humour of their own exaggerations, they live avowedly on their own good spirits. And in them Dickens really touches problems and elements of greatness which are as old as the world and as great as any tragedy. He touches, for example, the great tragedy of Ireland, which after innumerable sorrows still lives upon an outrageous gaiety. Above all he touches the case of the great masses of the poor, whom he loved. He saw deeper than a hundred statisticians and philanthropic economists. No man on earth was ever a more fierce and mutinous Radical than he; but he saw that all calculations of the mortal hours of men left out the everlasting moment.
DISPUTES ON DICKENS
AN INTERESTING little controversy began some time ago in the Academy on the position of Dickens, and it throws a flood of light on the real character of the temporary reaction against that great novelist’s fame. ‘E.A.B.’, the able and decisive Academy critic is a typical representative of the school devoted to ‘Art’ in its more technical sense, and like all the critics of that school he has a clear, hard and almost scientific critical method of critical test. Dickens falls in his eyes because of what he calls his ‘artistic ignorance and indifference’ and his lack of ‘feeling for literature’, all of which means that Dickens was not an artist of the particular pattern which French fiction in the nineteenth century has made essential and even popular.
Of course, this particular scheme of criticism will say what it has to say and pass, as so many other schemes of criticism have passed. We shall never, thank Heaven, have a sound and conclusive scheme of literary art, any more than we shall have a scheme of theology which makes the universe as obvious as a figure in geometry. If there were produced a really final and satisfactory justification of religion on logical grounds, most healthy-minded people would immediately cease to believe in religion; and if there were such a justification of art, most healthy-minded people would cease to believe in art. Touching these high matters we can endure anything except that they should turn out to be so small that we can even understand them. And so the ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ school of criticism will be found to be merely relative and in a century or so Flaubert the critic will be as dead and as interesting as Aristotle. But Flaubert the novelist will remain impeccable and also Dickens the novelist. For it is only the things which are deliberately built to last for ever which cannot do so.
The real reason of the temporary eclipse of the fame of Dickens is not that he was a faulty artist but that he expressed almost faultlessly a certain class of thoughts and emotions which happen at this moment to be almost absent from the cultivated class. It was not that he expressed badly but that we know nothing at all about the kind of thought and sentiment that he expressed well. It was not that he had a deficiency in his art, it is we that have a deficiency in our experience. The work of Dickens appears to us rambling and shapeless for precisely the same reason that the work of Maeterlinck would have appeared to Dickens rambling and shapeless. There is a mood at the back of the whole work of Dickens as much as there is a mood at the back of the whole work of Maeterlinck; and it must be confessed with shame, as far as I am concerned, that our mood is the mood of Maeterlinck and not the mood of Dickens. To ‘E.A.B.’ and his school, ‘Pickwick’ is not exactly either good or bad; it is simply not a novel at all. To the very best critics of Dickens’ time, ‘Pelleas and Melisande’ would have been something not exactly good or bad but simply not a drama at all. If they had seen it acted they would not have thought that the drama was deteriorating. They would only have thought that they themselves were going mad.
The truth is that whole schools of art and of great art can become merely mysterious and imbecile to the most enlightened generations if those generations do not cultivate the particular emotions by which those schools of art are inspired. Thus, for example, the whole of the Italian art, from Giotto to Botticelli would have appeared and did appear to the critics of the eighteenth century an ugly and infantile exhibition like the scrawlings of a child upon a slate. To the eighteenth century it was quite obvious that these medieval pictures were mere despicable beginnings. Their lines were drawn wrong, their colours were arranged wrong, their figures were anatomical monstrosities, their landscapes had the absurdity of Noah’s Ark, their saints had the grimness of an army of idiots. No blasphemer had ever dared to draw upon his darkest page a picture so impious as this picture of an insane universe with its grinning angels, its gaping saints. Not the most secret volume of eighteenth-century atheism had conceived in its wrath and satire such a celestial parody as these painters had conceived in their humility and faith. Such was the impression which Christian art produced on the whole of the ‘age des philosophes’: that it was an example of an almost shocking innocence like a baby’s picture of God.
Then came the nineteenth century when man felt again the same emotions which had been felt in the time of Giotto. Men of the boldest and most liberal intellects began to dream the great medieval dream of a united and devout Christendom. Men of the ripest taste and opinion began to join celibate brotherhoods and school themselves with fast and flagellation. Poets, painters and musicians went back to the splendid superstitions of medieval Europe, and collected tales and delusions as industriously as a scientist could collect facts. Upon the whole nation descended again the great mood of mystery, the nameless convictions, the certainties that have no origin and the hopes that have no end. And with a start of indescribable surprise men found themselves looking at those dark old Italian pictures with new eyes. The lines that went wrong now went right; they perfectly expressed a quaint and delicate severity. The landscapes that looked absurd now looked enchanted; they were lit with the morning of the world. The faces that had been hideous had grown beautiful like the face of a good man when we have come to know him and cannot imagine any other features being the perfect picture of his soul. This is what has happened again and again in the world and will continue to happen until the end. When a set of emotions are unfamiliar to a people, the art which expresses them will appear not only superstitious but obviously inartistic. When a set of emotions become familiar to a people, the art which expresses them will appear not only philosophical but obviously artistic.
People who do not share the sentiment of Maeterlinck do not say that he is not moral or true to life, they say he does not write plays. People who do not share the sentiment of Whitman do not say that he is not right or not worthy, they say that he does not write poetry. People who do not share the sentiment of Dickens do not say that he is too optimistic or too conventional, they say that he had “absolutely no feeling for literature”.
When we come to examine the case of Dickens carefully, we find that this is exactly what has happened. The characteristics which ‘E.A.B.’ and other critics note as the defects of Dickens are in a great many instances the proper and inevitable modes of expressing a certain gigantic conviviality and cordiality. For example, ‘E.A.B.’ speaks of the formlessness of ‘Pickwick’, but he does not notice that what he calls formlessness was in fact a well-known and celebrated artistic form among the elder and more convivial writers. The sprawling and seemingly disconnected novel of comic adventure was a recognized and excellent form of art. Recent criticism I believe is accustomed to describe it as the ‘picaresque’ novel. For when we come to think of it, the whole point is very simple. The new impressionist method of brevity, restraint, and an adhesion to one central image or incident is the right and proper literary form to express the kind of things which the new Impressionist novel wishes to express; the little ironies, the sad small stories that end without an ending; the faces that are too bitter for tears. About these sort of things it may be said, not as a commonplace phrase, but as a sound and telling rule of art, that the less said about them the better. One flash of literary lightning revealing a woman dead in a garret with a victorious army marching by is enough if the sentiment concerned is the sentiment of a pitiful irony. But it is not enough if the sentiment is that of the ancient camaraderies and immortal enterprises of the ‘picaresque’ novel.
You cannot exhibit Sam Weller in a flash of lightning. The whole emotional significance of Sam Weller depends upon the idea that like some warrior of the mythic ages, he has passed unscathed through infinite adventures and will pass unscathed through innumerable adventures. The reason of the whole matter is that of misfortune we all desire to say little and that the words in a French short story should be few, like the words in a house of mourning. But the moment we come into the atmosphere of positive delight and exultation a new element enters in, the desire to linger. Books like ‘Pickwick’ are the most lingering. Men linger over their walks, over their talks, over their stories, over their dinners. All the characters seem friends who are talking together far into an immortal night to which no grey morning ever comes.
The formlessness of ‘Pickwick’ is therefore its form. This mood of exuberance has two natural expressions, the desire to linger and the desire to ramble. If Pickwick and his friends were not continually crossing a crowded stage which was for ever changing like a transformation scene and of which they only were the constant factors, it would not be a better book but a worse. If the whole story revolved round one incident like a story by Guy de Maupassant, if everything turned on the Fancy Dress Ball at Eatonswill or the Cricket Match at Dingley Dell, if the central symbol of the whole story were Mr. Sawyer’s red handkerchief or Mr. Winkle’s horse; if the Pickwick Papers in short were only a brilliant fragment of psychology about the fat boy, or a sad sea-green little idyll about Mr. Stiggins, it would not be a better book but a worse, for it would have lost its supreme meaning even as we have lost its sense of a world almost choked with adventure and a hero constant only in the mutability of a comic Ulysses, faithful only to his own omnivorous fickleness.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE AS A ROMANTIC
THE GENIUS OF Charlotte Bronte is unique in the only valuable sense in which the word can be applied; the only sense which separates the rarity of some gift in a poet from the rarity of some delusion in an asylum. However complex or even grotesque an artistic power may be, it must be as these qualities exist in a key, which is one of the most complex and grotesque of human objects, but which has for its object the opening of doors and the entrance into wider things. Charlotte Bronte’s art was something more or less than complex; and it was not to be described as grotesque; except rarely— and unintentionally, But it was temperamental and, like all things depending on temperament, unequal; and it was so personal as to be perverse. It is in connection with power of this kind, however creative, that we have to discover and define what distinguished it from the uncreative intensity of the insane. I cannot understand what it was that made the Philistines of a former generation regard Jane Eyre as morally unsound; probably it was its almost exaggerated morality. But if they had regarded it as mentally unsound, I could have understood their prejudice, while perceiving the nature of their error.
Jane Eyre is, among other things, one of the finest detective stories in the world; and for any one artistically attuned to that rather electric atmosphere, the discovery of the mad wife of Rochester is, as that type of sensation should always be, at once startling and suitable. But a stolid reader, trained in a tamer school of fiction, might be excused if he came to the conclusion that the wife was not very much madder than her husband, and that even the governess herself was a little queer. Such a critic, however, would be ill-taught, as people often are in tame schools; for the mildest school is anything but the most moral. The distinction between the liberating violence that belongs to virtue, as distinct from the merely burrowing and self-burying violence that belongs to vice, is something that can only be conveyed by metaphors; such as that I have used about the key. Some may feel disposed to say that the Bronte spirit was not so much a key as a battering ram. She had indeed some command of both instruments, and could use the more domestic one quietly enough at times; but the vital point is that they opened the doors. Or it might be said that Jane Eyre and the mad woman lived in the same dark and rambling house of mystery, but for the maniac all doors opened continually inwards, while for the heroine all doors, one after the other, opened outwards towards the sun.
One of these universal values in the case of Charlotte Bronte is the light she throws on a very fashionable aesthetic fallacy: the over-iterated contrast between realism and romance. They are spoken of as if they were two alternative types of art, and sometimes even as if they were two antagonistic directions of spiritual obligation. But in truth they are things in two different categories; and, like all such things, can exist together, or apart, or in any degree of combination. Romance is a spirit; and as for realism, it is a convention. To say that some literary work is realistic, not romantic, is to be as inconsequent as the man who said to me once, “The Irish are warm-hearted, not logical.” He, at any rate, was not logical, or he would have seen that his statement was like saying that somebody was red-haired rather than athletic.
There is no reason why a man with strong reasoning power should not have strong affections; and it is my experience, if anything, that the man who can argue clearly in the abstract generally does have a generosity of blood and instincts. But he may not have it, for the things are in different categories. This case of an error about the Irish has some application to the individual case of Charlotte Bronte, who was Irish by blood, and in a sense, all the more Irish for being brought up in Yorkshire. An Irish friend of mine, who suffers the same exile in the same environment, once made to me the suggestive remark that the towering and over-masculine barbarians and lunatics who dominate the Bronte novels, simply represent the impression produced by the rather boastful Yorkshire manners upon the more civilized and sensitive Irish temperament. But the wider application is that romance is an atmosphere, as distinct as a separate dimension, which co-exists with and penetrates the whole work of Charlotte Bronte; and is equally present in all her considerable triumphs of realism, and in her even greater triumphs of unreality.
Realism is a convention, as I have said; it is generally a matter of external artistic form, when it is not a matter of mere fashion or convenience, how far the details of life are given, or how far they are the details of the life we know best. It may be rather more difficult to describe a winged horse than a war horse; but after all it is as easy to count feathers as to count hairs; it is as easy and as dull. The story about a hero in which the hairs of his horse were all numbered would not be a story at all; the line must be drawn a long while before we come to anything like literal reality; and the question of whether we give the horse his wings, or even trouble to mention his colour, is merely a question of the artistic form we have chosen. It is the question between casting a horse in bronze or carving him in marble; not the question of describing a horse for the purposes of a zoologist or for the purposes of a bookie. But the spirit of the work is quite another thing. Works of the wildest fantasticality in form can be filled with a rationalistic and even a sober spirit; as are some works of Lucian, of Swift and of Voltaire. On the other hand, descriptions of the most humdrum environments, told with the most homely intimacy, can be shot through and through with the richest intensity, not only of the spirit of sentiment but of the spirit of adventure.
Few will be impelled to call the household of Mr. Rochester a humdrum environment, but it is none the less true that Charlotte Bronte can fill the quietest rooms and corners with a psychological romance which is rather a matter of temperature than of time or place. After all, the sympathetic treatment of Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre is not more intrinsically romantic and even exaggerative than the sympathetic treatment of Mr. Paul Emanuel in Villette; though the first may be superficially a sort of demon and the second more in the nature of an imp. To present Mr. Emanuel sympathetically at all was something of an arduous and chivalric adventure. And Charlotte Bronte was chivalric in this perfectly serious sense; perhaps in too serious a sense, for she paid for the red-hot reality of her romance in a certain insufficiency of humour. She was adventurous, but in an intensely individualistic and therefore an intensely womanly way.
It is the most feminine thing about her that we can think of her as a knight-errant, but hardly as one of an order or round table of knights-errant. Thackeray said that she reminded him of Joan of Arc. But it is one of the fascinating elements in the long romance of Christendom that figures like Joan of Arc have an existence in reality. This vision of the solitary virgin, adventurous and in arms, is very old in European literature and mythology; and the spirit of it went with the little governess along the roads to the dark mansion of madness as if to the castle of an ogre. The same rule had run like a silver thread through the purple tapestries of Ariosto; and we may willingly salute in our great country-woman, especially amid the greatest epic of our country, something of that nobility which is in the very name of Britomart.
PART THREE: THOUGHT AND BELIEF
ANTI-RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
By G.K. Chesterton
Originally a contribution to An Outline of Christianity; the Story of our Civilization. Vol. IV. Christianity and Modern Thought, 1926. The Waverley Book Co., London
THE ECLIPSE of Christian theology during the rationalist advance of the eighteenth century is one of the most interesting of historical episodes. In order to see it clearly, we must first realize that it was an episode and that it is now historical. It may be stating it too strongly to say that it is now dead; it is perhaps enough to say that it is now distant and yet distinct; that it is divided from our own time as much as any period of the past. Neither reason nor faith will ever die; for men would die if deprived of either. The wildest mystic uses his reason at some stage; if it be only by reasoning against reason. The most incisive sceptic has dogmas of his own; though when he is a very incisive sceptic, he has often forgotten what they are. Faith and reason are in this sense co-eternal; but as the words are popularly used, as loose labels for particular periods, the one is now almost as remote as the other. What was called the Age of Reason has vanished as completely as what are called the Ages of Faith.
It is essential to see this fact first, because if we do not see its limitations we do not see its outline. It has nothing to do with which period we prefer, or even which we think right. A rationalist is quite entitled to look back to the eighteenth century as a golden age of good sense, as the medievalist looks back to the thirteenth century as a golden age of good faith. But he must look back, and look back across an abyss. We may like or dislike the atmosphere of the modern world, with its intense interest in anything that is called psychological, and in much that is called psychical. We may think that speculation has gone more deep or that it has grown more morbid. We may like or dislike the religions of faith-healing or spirit-rapping; or a hundred other manifestations of the same mood, in fields quite remote from the supernatural or even the spiritual. We may like or dislike, for instance, that vast modern belief in “the power of suggestion” expressed in advertising or publicity and educational methods of all sorts. We may like or dislike the appeal to the non-rational element; the perpetual talk about the Sub-conscious Mind or the Race Memory or the Herd Instinct. We may deplore or we may admire all these developments. But we must fix it in our minds as a historical fact that to any one of the great ‘Infidels’ or Freethinkers of the eighteenth century, this whole modern world of ours would seem a mere madhouse. He might almost be driven, in pursuit of the reasonable, to take refuge in a monastery.
We are dealing therefore with an episode and even an interlude; though the man who likes it has as much right to say that it was an hour of happy daylight between the storms as a Christian has to say it of primitive Christianity or medieval Christendom. From about the time that Dryden died a Catholic to about the time that Newman began to write a little less like a Protestant, there was a period during which the spirit of philosophy filling men’s minds was not positively Protestant any more than it was positively Catholic. It was rationalist even in Protestants and Catholics; in a Catholic like Pope or a Protestant like Paley. But it can be seen at the clearest when the last clinging traditions or presences were dropped; when the most stolid specimen of the Protestant middle classes is found busily scribbling sneers in the footnotes and even the index of a great history of the Fall of Rome; when a brilliant pupil going forth out of the Jesuit seminary turns back over his shoulder the terrible face of Voltaire.
In order to exhibit the essential quality, let us first compare the period with that which preceded it. Touching its historical causes, no man with a sense of human complexity will offer anything but contributory causes. But I think there are contributory causes that have been strangely overlooked. On the face of it, it refers back to the Renaissance, which refers back to the old pagan world. On the face of it, it also refers back to the Reformation, though chiefly in its negative aspect or branch in the old Christian world. But both these things are connected with a third, that has not, I think, been adequately realized. And that is a feeling which can only be called futility. It arose out of the disproportion between the dangers and agonies of the religious wars and the really unreasonable compromise in which they ended; “cujus regio ejus religio”: which may be translated, “Let every State establish its State Church”, but which did mean in the Renaissance epoch, “Let the Prince do what he likes.”
The seventeenth century ended with a note of interrogation. Pope, the poet of reason, whom some thought too reasonable to be poetical, was once compared to a question mark, because he was a crooked little thing that asked questions. The seventeenth century was not little, but it was in some ways crooked, in the sense of crabbed. But anyhow it began with the ferocious controversies of the Puritans and it ended with a question. It was an open question, but it was also an open wound. It was not only that the end of the seventeenth century was of all epochs the most inconclusive. It was also, it must be remembered, inconclusive upon a point which people had always hoped to see concluded. To use the literal sense of the word ‘conclude’, they expected the wound to close. We naturally tend to miss this point today. We have had nearly four hundred years of divided Christianity and have grown used to it; and it is the Reunion of Christendom that we think of as the extraordinary event. But they still thought the Disunion of Christendom an extraordinary event. Neither side had ever really expected it to remain in a state of Disunion. All their traditions for a thousand years were of some sort of union coming out of controversy, ever since a united religion had spread all over a united Roman Empire. From a Protestant standpoint, the natural thing was for Protestantism to conquer Europe as Christianity had conquered Europe. In that case the success of the counter-Reformation would be only the last leap of a dying flame like the last stand of Julian the Apostate. From a Catholic standpoint the natural thing was for Catholicism to reconquer Europe, as it had more than once reconquered Europe; in that case the Protestant would be like the Albigensians: a passing element ultimately reabsorbed. But neither of these natural things happened. Prussia and the other Protestant principalities fought against Austria as the heir of the Holy Roman Empire in the Thirty Years War. They fought each other to a standstill. It was utterly and obviously hopeless to make Austria Protestant or Prussia Roman Catholic. And from the moment when that fact was realized the nature of the whole world was changed. The rock had been cloven and would not close up again, and in the crack or chasm a new sort of strange and prickly weed began to grow. The open wound festered.
We have all heard it said that the Renaissance was produced or precipitated by the Fall of Constantinople. It is true in a sense perhaps more subtle than is meant. It was not merely that it let loose the scholars from the Byzantine Court. It was also that it let loose the sceptical thoughts of the scholars, and of a good many other people when they saw this last turn of the tide in the interminable strife between Christ and Mahomet. The war between Islam and Christendom had been inconclusive. The war between the Reformation and the counter-Reformation was inconclusive. And I for one fancy that the former fact had a good deal to do with the full sceptical expansion of the eighteenth century. When men saw the Crescent and the Cross tossed up alternately as a juggler tosses balls, it was difficult for many not to think that one might be about as good or bad as the other when they saw the Protestant and the Catholic go up and down on the seesaw of the Thirty Years War. Many were disposed to suspect that it was six to one and half-a-dozen to the other. This addition involved an immense subtraction; and two religions came to much less than one. Many began to think that, as they could not both be true, they might both be false. When that thought had crossed the mind the reign of the rationalist had begun.
The thought, as an individual thought, had of course begun long before. It is, in fact, as old as the world; and it is quite obviously as old as the Renaissance. In that sense the father of the modern world is Montaigne; that detached and distinguished intelligence which, as Stevenson said, saw that men would soon find as much to quarrel with in the Bible as they had in the Church. Erasmus and Rabelais and even Cervantes had their part; but in these giants there was still a great gusto of subconscious conviction, still Christian; they mocked at the lives of men, but not at the life of man. But Montaigne was something more revolutionary than a revolutionist; he was a relativist. He would have told Cervantes that his knight was not far wrong in thinking puppets were men, since men are really puppets. He would have said that windmills were as much giants as anything else; and that giants would be dwarfs if set beside taller giants. This doubt, some would say this poison in its original purity, did begin to work under the surface of society from the time of Montaigne onwards and worked more and more towards the surface as the war of religions grew more and more inconclusive. There went with it a spirit that may truly be called humane. But we must always remember that even its refreshing humanity had a negative as well as a positive side. When people are no longer in the mood to be heroic, after all, it is only human to be humane. Some men were really tolerant, but others were merely tired. When people are tired of the subject, they generally agree to differ.
But against this clear mood, as against a quiet evening sky, there stood up the stark and dreadful outlines of the old dogmatic and militant institutions. Institutions are machines; they go on working under any sky and against any mood. And the clue to the next phase is the revolt against their revolting incongruity. The engines of war, the engines of torture, that had belonged to the violent crises of the old creeds, remained rigid and repellent; all the more mysterious for being old and sometimes even all the more hideous for being idle. Men in that mellow mood of doubt had no way of understanding the fanaticism and the martyrdom of their fathers. They knew nothing of medieval history or of what a united Christendon had once meant to men. They were like children horrified at the sight of a battlefield.
Take the determining example of the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition was Spy Fever. It produced the sort of horrors such fevers produce; to some extent even in modern wars. The Spaniards had reconquered Spain from Islam with a glowing endurance and defiance as great as any virtue ever shown by man; but they had the darker side of such warfare; they were always struggling to deracinate a Jewish plot which they believed to be always selling them to the enemy. Of this dark tale of perverted patriotism the humanitarians knew nothing. All they knew was that the Inquisition was still going on. And suddenly the great Voltaire rose up and shattered it with a hammer of savage laughter. It may seem strange to compare Voltaire to a child. But it is true that though he was right in hating and destroying it, he never knew what it was that he had destroyed.
There was born in that hour a certain spirit, which the Christian spirit should be large enough to cover and understand. In relation to many things it was healthy, though in relation to some things it was shallow. We may be allowed to associate it with the jolly uncle who does not believe in ghosts. It had an honourable expression in the squires and parsons who put down the persecution of witches. The uncle is not always just to Spiritualists; but he is rather a comfort on a dark night. The squire did not know all there is to know about diabolism, but he did stop many diabolical fears of diabolism. And if we are to understand history, that is humanity, we must sympathize with this breezy interlude in which it seemed natural for humanity to be humane.
The mention of the squire is not irrelevant; there was in that humanity something of unconscious aristocracy. One of the respects in which the rational epoch was immeasurably superior to our own was in the radiant patience with which it would follow a train of thought. But it is only fair to say that in this logic there was something of leisure, and indeed we must not forget how much of the first rational reform of the age came from above. It was a time of despots who were also deists or even, like Frederick the Great, practically atheists. But Frederick was sometimes humanitarian if he was never human. Joseph of Austria, offending his people by renouncing religious persecution, was very like a squire offending the village by repressing witch-burning. But in considering the virtues of the age, we must not forget that it had a very fine ideal of honourable poverty; the Stoic idea of Jefferson and Robespierre. It also believed in hard work, and worked very hard in the details of reform. A man like Bentham toiled with ceaseless tenacity in attacking abuse after abuse. But people hardly realized that his utilitarianism was creating the new troubles of Capitalism, any more than that Frederick of Prussia was making the problem of modern militarism.
Perhaps the perfect moment of every mortal thing is short, even of mortal things dealing with immortal, as was the best moment of the Early Church or the Middle Ages. Anyhow the best moment of rationalism was very short. Things always overlap, and Bentham and Jefferson inherited from something that had already passed its prime. Not for long did man remain in that state of really sane and sunny negation. For instance, having covered the period with the great name of Voltaire, I may well be expected to add the name of Rousseau. But even in passing from one name to the other, we feel a fine shade of change which is not mere progression. The rationalist movement is tinged with the romantic movement, which is to lead men back as well as forward. They are asked to believe in the General Will, that is the soul of the people; a mystery. By the time the French Revolution is passed, it is elemental that things are loose that have not been rationalized. Danton has said, “It is treason to the people to take away the dream”. Napoleon has been crowned, like Charlemagne, by a Pope. And when the dregs of Diderot’s bitterness were reached; when they dragged the Goddess of Reason in triumph through Notre Dame, the smouldering Gothic images could look down on that orgy more serenely then than when Voltaire began to write; awaiting their hour. The age was ended when these men thought it was beginning. Their own mystical maenad frenzy was enough to prove it: the goddess of Reason was dead.
One word may be added, to link up the age with many other ages. It will be noted that it is not true, as many suppose, that the rational attack on Christianity came from the modern discoveries in material science. It had already come, in a sense it had already come and gone, before these discoveries really began. They were pursued persistently partly through a tradition that already existed. But men were not rationalistic because they were scientists. Rather they became scientists because they were rationalists. Here as everywhere the soul of man went first, even when it denied itself.
THE CAMP AND THE CATHEDRAL
IT MUST always be something of a problem how far the private amateur may venture merely to guess that the professional specialist is mistaken. On the other hand it is quite certain that the man who knows most about a thing is often quite wrong about it. He is often quite wrong in fact, and still more wrong in spirit. On the other hand, the fact that the learned man has lost humility is no reason why the unlearned man also should lose that humorous and healthy gift. On the whole, I think the test of the question is in the size and simplicity of the mistake. It depends on whether the scholar is blind to something because it is too small to be seen, or because it is too large to be seen. I cannot draw the learned man’s attention to something recondite, for he knows far more of such obscure details than I do. But I may sometimes draw his attention to something obvious, for that is the sort of thing that the learned man has a way of falling over in the street.
History is the only hobby in which I have dabbled even in this tentative fashion; and it is to history that I should specially apply the test. I mean the test of whether the truth has been missed because it is small and hidden, or actually because it is big and plain. Cobbett, for instance, was an amateur historian in somewhat the same sense, though less amateurish than myself. And when he was right, as I think he generally was, it was because he had an eye for large and obvious things. His eye went across a great landscape like a bird, and was master of the lie of the land. Thus his broadest deduction was simply from the big churches in England, and especially from the very fact of their bigness. It was a fact filling the sky; a thing whose shadow lay at evening on the whole landscape. But it never seems to have occurred to anybody but Cobbett at that time, to ask whether a sparse remnant of ignorant savages were likely to have raised a sort of sacred tower of Babel to the stars, in half the hamlets of England.
The obscurantism of the Reformation, and the rationalists who were its heirs, was in this way quite unique. Nobody before or since ever kept a people quite so much in darkness as those who put out all the candles in the sixteenth century. In this, for instance, the anti-Catholic reaction in the sixteenth century was quite different from the first Catholic movement in the fourth or fifth century. The Early Christians had a great moral horror of the last phase of the great civilization of Rome; but they never attempted to pretend that it was not a great civilization, or that it had not been made by Rome. Their moral horror was in most matters justified; in some matters considerably exaggerated. But in its wildest exaggerations of fanaticism, it never talks as if the heathen had not built bridges or produced poetry. They did not call the classical architecture the Vandal architecture, as if it had been built only by the barbarians who destroyed it. Yet that would have been a parallel to the very word ‘Gothic’ which we are still compelled by custom to use. The medieval world did not talk about Plato and Cicero as fools occupied with futilities; yet that is exactly how a more modern world talked of the philosophy of Aquinas and sometimes even of the purely philosophic parts of Dante. The Christians recognized an awful spiritual chasm dividing them from their great ancestors; but they recognized that their ancestors were great. At no moment in all those two thousand years was the legend lost that Virgil was something magnificent, whether as a magician in the Dark Ages or a model classic in the Middle Ages. In religion and morals there had indeed been a shuddering recoil; but it was a recoil from over-civilization, not a complacent contempt for savagery. They thought the Coliseum had been the arena of bestial abominations; of beasts, employed by men in a spirit too base to be called beastly; and so it had. But they did not think the Coliseum had been made by beasts; or look at its labyrinth of arches with contemptuous curiosity, as at the rude instinctive architecture of an ant-hill. In all that mixture of regret and pain and fascination, with which paganism has haunted the Christian centuries, there was never a touch of the innocent vulgarity with which even the Victorians sometimes talked of monks as if they were monkeys.
Now the lifting of this load of obscurantism was a thing largely done by the light of nature, by men like William Cobbett or William Morris. And the light of nature showed them very simple and solid things like the large churches in the English countrysides. These things are the unanswerable arguments of the amateur. These are the big guns that he can really bring up in order to outflank the specialist. Constitutional historians like Hume and Hallam and Robertson might have read many things that the adventurous amateur could not read, but it was impossible to pretend that he could not have access to his own huge empty parish church. It required no spectacles to see a church spire; and the stones of Winchester needed no interpreter to translate them from the Latin. These facts were soon found sufficient, to anyone who would use his senses; and it became more and more self-evident that men had been about some very big business in medieval times. The researches of later and more learned scholars confirmed the random commonsense of Cobbett or Morris. But ignorant men had originally made the right guess; and made it merely because they refused to explain away a mountain, or ignore the presence of a whale.
I have remarked that nobody ever tried to do with Roman remains what was once done with Gothic remains. I mean the attempt to treat them not merely as ruins but as rudiments. I mean the attempt to look at the stone arches as we look at stone hatchets, or regard carved pillars as we regard chipped flints. Nobody ever condescended to heathen architecture, as they condescended to Christian architecture. As a matter of fact it is far more impossible for us to build a Gothic abbey than a Roman aqueduct. The engineering work of the pagan empire does in many ways resemble the works of more modern times. It resembles them largely because the method is scientific. It resembles them still more because the labour is servile. You could build a Roman aqueduct and improve on a Roman aqueduct with scientific appliances. But you cannot build a Gothic cathedral with servile labour. People who want to work in that way must put up with the Pyramids and the Eiffel Tower. And this brings me to a final consideration, in this matter of Roman and medieval remains, which has often intrigued and attracted me as an amateur in historical guesswork. It is a yet larger though somewhat looser application of the same principle, that the things that are hid from the wise and understanding are the things that are too large for them to see.
I have often wondered whether the vastness and vitality of the legends that descend from the Dark Ages, such as the legends of King Arthur and the Round Table, were due to this comparative continuity between the last strength of the Empire and the first strength of the Church. I mean that there may have been a moment, even in Britain, when that majesty of the old pagan civilization still stood unchanged, save that it was no longer pagan. The combination of the old pride in being Roman with the new pride in being Christian may have created a militant morality really not unlike its later form of medieval chivalry. In other words, the popular tradition may not be so far wrong when it talks of some dim fighter in the fifth century as a knight. It may not be so far wrong when it talks of the table where those fighters feasted as the original model of knighthood. It is only by a sort of symbol that we clothe the body of that British king in thirteenth century armour; but it may be something more than a symbol which clothes his spirit with the thirteenth century conception of arms. If ever history did repeat itself, the mood of the first Crusaders who fought with the Saracens might really very well have repeated, as in a mirror, the mood of the last baptized Romans and Romanized Britons who fought with the Saxons. It is really a historical fallacy to say that the courtliness and polish of Sir Lancelot would not have existed in that barbarous time. Courtliness and polish are exactly the things that would have existed in one of the last of the Romanized Christians in comparison with his barbarous time. It is a blunder to say that the virginity and the vision of Sir Galahad are a later romantic fiction added to a half-heathen struggle. Virginity and visions are exactly the ideas that would have shone among the last champions of a Catholic culture in a half-heathen struggle. In this matter of Arthurian legend, I am disposed to suspect that the romantic view is really the realistic view, and the right view. If others doubt it, it will not be because of any realistic arguments of history against it. It will be because others do not feel as I do the enormous argument from the scale of popular stories; the sense that a story we have all heard from childhood is something solid and colossal, like a Gothic cathedral or a Roman camp.
THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY
EVERY NOW and again in the long and weary history of literature and journalism something is said that is important, something that blows a trumpet and calls a halt. For the first time, perhaps for many years we have suddenly to stop and think. There remains the essential difference between a sentence that is read once and a sentence that is read twice. Now, one of these arresting and transfiguring hints can be found in Hilaire Belloc’s The Historic Thames. He says it was a mere accident of history that the phrase Westminster Abbey does not sound to us today like the phrase Welbeck Abbey. It would give the modern English a great shock if Westminster Abbey were turned into a suite of rooms for the Duke of Westminster. Yet it gives them no shock that Welbeck Abbey should be turned into a suite of rooms for the Duke of Portland. Yet God was worshipped, I suppose, in Welbeck Abbey as well as in Westminster Abbey. The first fact about Westminster Abbey, considered as a religious institution, is as simple as it is sardonic. It is the great religious institution of the Middle Ages that managed to survive.
The whole of this theme is, of course, subject to exaggeration on both sides. One of the ablest men I have ever known summed up all the tombs at Westminster which tourists go to see in the curt and confident formula: “Westminster Abbey is to be venerated, not because of those that sleep therein, but rather in spite of them.” Many may call this a harsh paradox; but if they walk round the Abbey seriously and slowly, and really observe what petty politicians and third-rate generals have cumbered the ground there with their cold and clumsy monuments, I do not think that they will wholly deny the truth of that idle but bitter jest. A very great part of the funereal art in the Abbey can really be expressed only by one of those colossal epigrams which can be found in the Gospels more than anywhere else. It is, indeed, such statuary as would be made by the dead burying their dead.
It is true that anyone knowing the savour either of England or Christianity will have the religious emotion as well as the patriotic by the low Gothic tomb of Chaucer. But this, if it be examined, is an exception that proves the rule. For Chaucer was buried there when the popular Christianity of the Middle Ages still coloured this church like all others. It would be appropriate in any case that Chaucer should be in Westminster Abbey, even if it were exactly what it was when he used to look out of his London window at its towers. But it would be far more appropriate if men like Pitt or Macaulay were buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral; the new Renaissance St. Paul’s, which seems built as a pantheon for the heathen but heroic aristocrats of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Florid pillars and posturing statues are appropriate to them; most of them died rather defying death than looking for immortality. And it is really a part of their patriotic, but not Christian spirit that their figures should, as it were, stand frozen for ever in some gesture of eloquence or pride. No imaginative person will wholly fail to respond to the emotion expressed about a murdered Renaissance prince by a great English Renaissance poet:
He is there Up like a Roman statue and will stand Till dawn has made him marble.
But to Chaucer all this would have been utterly incomprehensible in connection with a church. In that connection he would have thought it as insolent and vulgar as a waxwork show. For he lived before the great lords had become the legend of England, instead of the great saints. Chaucer, whatever his own faults or vanities might be, would certainly have been the first to admit that it was the Abbey that sanctified his dust and not his dust that sanctified the Abbey. He would not have thought of it as a gallery or public record office where the names and deeds of great poets could be found, though it is likely enough that he knew he was a great poet, and even, among his worldly acquaintances, warmly insisted on the fact. He would have thought of the Abbey as a refuge, where a poor old sinner named Geoffrey Chaucer might feel a little more comfortable in the Dies Irae. I am not here choosing by ethical preference between the two attitudes; still less do I despise either one or the other. The name of Nelson, for instance, will always be not only an inspiring but, properly understood, a purifying name. And it seems quite appropriate for Nelson, in his own time, type, station and tradition, to cry out, “A peerage or Westminster Abbey!” meaning by Westminster Abbey merely glory and death. But I doubt if Chaucer could have been made to understand what a peerage could possibly have to do with Westminster Abbey. Warriors at least as valiant and victorious as Nelson were buried in Chaucer’s day—the Black Prince, for instance. Warriors at least as valiant and victorious as Nelson were buried at Westminster in the Middle Ages—Henry V, for instance. But when their images were carved on their tombs at all they were carved with closed eyes and hands pointed in prayer. And I have seen one such monument, in Salisbury Cathedral, I think, in which the man lies in dumb supplication, but the dog at his feet has risen erect and watchful, having heard the trumpet of God. It has nothing to do with men being religious men in the modern sense, or even with their being good men. It is a matter of a great popular religion which never affects anybody except when it affects everybody. King John would have been quite incapable of imagining himself exhibited in a church in any other attitude.
I am not here discussing, of course, anything about the ecclesiastical changes as they affect theology; still less should I dream of saying that the spirit Chaucer would have understood did not continue at all in the Anglican Church after the spoliation of the monasteries. It continued markedly in George Herbert, and most unmistakably in Bishop Ken. But all that is a controversy with which, fortunately, we are not here concerned. My point for the moment is purely political; I say that the rise of England into a great modern nation, the particular kind of aristocracy that ruled it while it rose; the greater severance for various reasons from the other European nations, and everything that culminated in the victorious war against Napoleon and the established peace of Queen Victoria—I say that all this did, in fact, produce a type of public spirit and public art in which the old religious significance of the Abbey sometimes almost disappeared. The idea increased that Westminster Abbey was a pantheon, more sensible, but no less secular, than the absurd Valhalla that the Kaiser had at Berlin, where some petty Teuton prince was represented as a giant and Goethe put beside him as a pigmy. That singular mixture of humour and shame which is the English temperament, saved us from doing anything so bad as that. Our statues, at the worst, were only conspicuous by being bad statues, like the old statue of the Duke of Wellington. At the best, they are conspicuous by not being there at all, like the new statue of Shakespeare. But there was enough of this parade of pompous sculpture to confuse or hide the spiritual meaning of Westminster Abbey, and sometimes even its architectural style. We talk of not being able to see the wood for the trees. It may be said that people cannot in this case see the church for the tombs.
All that the Abbey meant to the ethics and atmosphere of this island from its earliest foundations is a thing not easy to state to the average modern reader. For the average modern reader, however well educated, is always taught the tale of the early Middle Ages in such a way that it makes no sense. This is because the main concern of the Middle Ages was the same as the main concern of this article; and it is almost always entirely left out. To take one working instance at random, the ordinary schoolboy of a good school, such as the school I went to, is always told, and therefore naturally believes, that Richard Coeur de Lion was a romantic and irresponsible ne’er-do-well who went away to the Crusades for the same reason that an adventurer takes the King’s shilling or a schoolboy runs away to sea—an itch for fighting or an impatience of honest work. Now, whatever Richard’s temperament may have been (and, no doubt, it was adventurous) this explanation simply does not cover the facts. Especially it does not cover these two facts—that John, who stopped to rule, was quite as fond of fighting as Richard, and did it very well; and that Philip Augustus of France, who went on the Crusade with Richard, was not particularly fond of fighting, and would very much have liked to stop and rule. The key that is lost here is simply a little thing called the Christian religion, in which all these men, good and bad, believed, and which was in a mortal peril from which the Christian peoples simply expected their Kings to defend it. Now, we could find a somewhat similar instance of the religious element being missed, and the whole business being therefore unmeaning, in the earlier history of Westminster Abbey. The usual way of writing in England about the times before and after the Norman Conquest is to represent it at best as what Carlyle called a “rude stalwart age”; an age of crowned freebooters, who neither asked nor gave mercy; an age of race conquering race with a sort of savage fair play and a more or less useful settlement; in short, a time when instincts laid a foundation on which ethics had yet to build. Anyone taking this ordinary heathen and dynastic view of the business would see something very fierce and final in the coincidence which Freeman maintained, that the Saxon Harold was crowned in Westminster Abbey almost immediately before he was killed at Hastings, and that the victorious Duke of Normandy was certainly crowned in Westminster Abbey almost immediately afterwards. The blood and iron theory of the Dark Ages would see in this the overwhelming of a race by a race; the soft, unguarded Saxons with their soft, unguarded King, Edward the Confessor, swept to nowhere by a raid of aliens clad in iron, appealing to nothing but force, and caring nothing for England. But the person holding this theory would instantly be pulled up short, and extremely puzzled by the discovery that the next really important thing that happened in Westminster Abbey after the Normans were in full possession of it was the canonization of Edward the Confessor. Stated in the modern manner, his difficulty would stand something like this: What made a number of William’s own Norman bishops, French gentlemen like any other, join in glorifying the memory of an old fool who had failed to save the Saxons from the victorious arms of their own uncles and cousins? Why should mere strong men, mere victors, bow down to the very weakest man of the defeated party and the subject race? Here, again, the key is always left out; the real explanation is never given. It will be found in the title of this article.
It was based, in short, on one broad and simple fact, which will seem almost incredible to people living in an age when religion is generally the product of a specially religious temperament. The fact was, to put it shortly, that though William the Conqueror had taken Edward the Confessor’s land, he did, in all probability, really regard Edward the Confessor as his superior. These fighting men of the Dark Ages were very fierce; but they did really think, ideally speaking, that it would be better if they were very gentle.
They were all soldiers; they would all have agreed that soldiers were inferior to saints. If we say of the men in the ages during which the Abbey was first erected, that they did not curb their coarse and cruel appetites, that in so far as they were tyrants and usurpers they went on being tyrants and usurpers, we shall probably be right. But if we read into them a modern philosophy of force, and imagine that they despised monks or despised meekness, we shall be exactly as wrong as if we supposed that all City men despise a soldier for having been fool enough to have gone under fire. Christianity was to these men exactly what patriotism is to modern Englishmen; the one sacred bond which even the most evil men would not like to own they had betrayed.
This fact of the old and real religious sentiment about the Abbey can be illustrated by any one out of the ten or twenty most famous things in it. Take the case of two celebrated men of the later Middle Ages, a father and a son, who were perhaps as responsible as anyone for the last turn taken by the medieval civilization in England, and who are both more or less connected with the place. I mean Henry IV, called Bolingbroke, and his son, the victor of Agincourt. There is nobody who has heard of Westminster Abbey who has not heard of the Jerusalem Chamber. There may even be few who have heard of the Jerusalem Chamber who have not been told by some guide-book or cicerone that Henry of Bolingbroke died there. But I think there are very much fewer people who would instantly remember (though the fact is known, of course, to all students of such things) that this very selfish, cynical and materialistic usurper found a strange spiritual comfort in dying in the Jerusalem Chamber, because it seemed to him a half fulfillment of a vow which had haunted his life, a vow to die or recover Jerusalem. The sentiment, in fact, was almost exactly the same as had moved a much more heroic man in a much more heroic medieval period, King Robert Bruce, to send his best warrior out of a much-menaced country, to carry his heart to the Holy Land, since he himself had never managed to carry there his powerful body and his powerful brain. To such men Westminster Abbey was not a national and finally satisfying thing. To such men Westminster Abbey was even a pis aller. When we have understood that, we have some glimpse of that burning concentration of the Christian conscience which made the Christendom of the Middle Ages almost one nation. But when modern humanitarians talk of international solidarity and the need for a United States of Europe, I do not notice that they give much praise to the Popes and the Crusades who so nearly made it a reality.
The case of Henry V carries me back to an instance of which I am not so sure, and of which I have not the details by me. But I am certain that I read in some quarter of competent learning and authority that Henry V’s entry into Paris was marked by proceedings which would very much astonish any good modern English poet, if he were called upon to write a patriotic poem on the event. To do these modern men of genius justice, I think it would have considerably surprised Shakespeare himself, for though Shakespeare was unquestionably in sympathy with the medieval type of religion in such vital matters as the admission or the purgation of sin, the note of international and European Christianity had been somewhat lost even by his time. In the account I read, so far as I remember, the principal interest displayed by Henry V entering Paris after Agincourt was a strong desire to pay homage to the various relics of celebrated saints which were preserved in that city. So that the conqueror of France, though in many ways a rather exceptionally rude and ruthless conqueror may almost be said to have passed a considerable part of his triumphal progress on his knees. These are the things (and I could give twenty other instances with more certainty and exactitude than I can give this one) which really strike the note of the extraordinary and universal conviction of medieval men, and exactly what the men who really made the Abbey would have meant by its religious aspect.
I am not writing controversially and I do not desire in this place to diminish the credit of the Imperial type of patriotism, but in the matter of spiritual atmospheres it is not untrue to say that if Chaucer or even Sackville, had read Mr. Kipling’s poetry and understood it they would simply not have been able to make head or tail of what he meant when he said:
The hush of the dread high altar Where the Abbey makes us We.
They would not have been able to understand how a vague Darwinian like Cecil Rhodes, who called a lonely hill in Africa “his church”, could have anything to do with the Abbey at all. It is not necessary to take so extreme a view in order to see that the two alternative courses which the religion of Western Europe may take are in a certain sense symbolized in the position of the Abbey today. At this moment the secular and the religious aspects of the institution are still more or less balanced. But under the searching light of spiritual tragedies, which more and more divide the nations into the friends and the enemies of the old proclamation of Constantine, the institution will almost certainly become more of one thing or more of the other. Our religion will either become more and more what the religion of the old Roman poets and historians so largely became, a certain savour of sanctity clinging round the emblems of patriotism and civic pride, so that the tattered flags above the altar will be at last more sacred than the altar itself. Or it will become more and more what that mysterious energy was before which the Roman religion of the poets and the historians perished— a voice out of the catacombs and a cry from the Cross.
THE RELIGIOUS AIM OF EDUCATION
By G.K. Chesterton
From The Torchbearer, 1925
IT IS ONLY by a definite and even deliberate narrowing of the mind that we can keep religion out of education. I do not deny that it may in certain cases be the least of many evils; that it may be a sort of loyalty to a political compromise; that it is certainly better than a political injustice. But secular education is a limitation, if it be only a self-limitation. The natural thing is to say what you think about nature; and especially, so to speak, about the nature of nature. The first and most obvious thing that a person is interested in is what sort of world he is living in; and why he is living in it. If you do not know, of course, you will not be able to say; but the mere fact of not being able to answer the question that the other person is most likely to ask, may or may not be what some people call education, but it is not a very brilliant exhibition of instruction. If you have convictions upon these cosmic and fundamental things, whether negative or positive, you are an instructor who is on one most important point refusing to instruct. Your motive may be generous, or it may be merely timid; but certainly it is not in itself educational.
It is sometimes said that the devotees of a doctrinal religion, who are so often depicted as donkeys, are in matters of this kind wearing blinkers. The word is not wisely chosen by the critics; and in one sense is much more applicable to the critic himself. The man who teaches authoritative answers to ultimate questions, even if he only says that Mumbo Jumbo made the world out of a pumpkin, may be dogmatizing or persecuting or tyrannically laying down the law about everything, but he is not blinking anything. He is not wearing blinkers, which implies deliberately limiting the field of his own vision. His vision may be in our view an illusion; but if it is very vivid to him, we cannot blame him for describing it; and anyhow he is describing the whole of it. If there is such a thing in the world as a donkey deliberately wearing blinkers, it is the enlightened educationist who is always making a nervous effort to keep out of his task of imparting knowledge any reference to the things that men from the beginning of the world have most wanted to know. Nor are those things mere hole-and-corner objects of a special curiosity. Whether or no they can ever be known, they are not only worth knowing, but they are the simplest and most elementary sort of knowledge. It is a good thing that children should fully realize that there is an objective world outside them, as solid as the lamp-post out in the street. But even when we make the lamp-post quite objective, it is not unnatural to ask what is its object. A naturalist, noting the common objects of the street, may observe many facts and put them down in a note-book. A bicyclist may bump into a lamp-post; a tramp may lean against a lamp-post; a drunkard may embrace a lamp-post or even in a lighter moment try to climb a lamp-post. But it is not a strange or specialist sort of knowledge to note about a lamp-post that it has a lamp.
Now secular education really means that everybody shall make a point of looking down at the pavement, lest by some fatal chance somebody should look up at the lamp. The lamp of faith that did in fact illuminate the street for the mass of mankind in most ages of history, was not only a wandering fire seen floating in the air by visionaries; it was also for most people the explanation of the post. If a low cloud like a London fog must indeed cover that flame, then it is an objective fact that the object will remain chiefly as an object to be bumped into. I am not blaming anybody who can only manage to regard the world in that highly objective light. Even if the lamp-post appears as a post without a lamp, and therefore a post without a purpose, it may be possible to take different views of it. The stoic, like the tramp, may lean on it; the optimist, like the drunkard, may embrace it; the progressive may attempt to climb it, and so on. So it is with those who merely bump into a headless world as into a lampless post; to whom the world is a large objective obstacle. I only say that there is a difference, and not a small or secondary difference, between those who know and those who do not know what the post is for.
The deepest of all desires for knowledge is the desire to know what the world is for and what we are for. Those who believe they can answer that question must at least be allowed to answer it as the first question and not as the last. A man who cannot answer it has a right to refuse to answer it; though perhaps he is rather too prone to comfort himself with the very dogmatic dogma that nobody else can answer it if he can’t. But no man has a right to answer it, or even to arrange for it being answered, as if it were a sort of peculiar and pedantic additional question, which only a peculiar and pedantic sort of pupil would be likely to ask. Secular education is more sensible than making religion one of the extras; like learning fret-work or Portuguese. And this principle is important in the controversy about religious education, because it involves the whole question which was so prominent in the controversy, the question of what is called ‘atmosphere’. All that it means is, that anybody who has a right to answer this question has a right to answer it as if it were the sort of question that it is; a question affecting the nature of the whole world and the purpose of every part of human life. If a man is to teach religion, it is absurd to ask him to teach it as if it were something else, that did not apply to all the activities of man. The expression ‘a religious hour’ is something very like a contradiction in terms. And it is amusing to note that the same casual sceptic who is always sneering at the orthodox for their forms and limitations, who is always talking of their Sunday religion and their separation of things sacred and profane, is generally the very man who is most ready to make fun of the idea of a religious atmosphere in the schools. That is to say he of all people objects most to sacred and profane things being united and to a religion that works on week-days as well as on Sundays. The truth is that the idea of atmosphere is simply a piece of the elementary psychology of children. In any other matter, these people would be the first to tell us that education must take note of all the influences forming the mind, however apparently light or accidental. They will go wild with dismay if the child has to look at the wrong wall-paper; they will set themselves seriously to see that he has the right picture of the wombat; but they tell us not to trouble whether he has the right picture of the world.
I am not implying, of course, that there is no value in a secular social enthusiasm; or even that, in the language that some use sincerely and even usefully, it may not deserve to be called religion. What I doubt is whether it can in this sense deserve to be called reason. It does not satisfy the primary intellectual hunger about the meaning of life, that certain people may mean well, even when they doubt whether it means anything. The truth is that there is implied in almost all idealism a number of ideas which the idealists have seldom really followed out as ideas. There is the notion of a choice that is mysteriously offered and followed by equally mysterious consequences; of a mystical value attached to one part of our nature without any authority to value it; of a sort of ultimate tryst with nobody in particular; in short all the rich tints of a London fog surrounding a lamp-post without a lamp. I am very far from lacking in respect for all this groping idealism; I only say, that by its own confession, it is very incomplete compared with that of anybody who has a complete philosophy, because he has a creed. And I mean no offence when I say that anybody who has this sort of education is literally a half-educated person.
But there is another aspect of the case, which illustrates the real truth in the rather rustic Puritanism of the people who made a fuss about Darwinism in Dayton. To some of us it seems strange that such very antiquated Protestantism should be supposed to represent religion. It seems stranger that such very antiquated Darwinism should be supposed to represent science. But as a matter of fact the protest and prosecution on that occasion did represent something. It stood for a strong popular instinct, not without justification, that science is being made to mean more than science ever really says. An evolutionary education is something very different from an education about evolution. Just as a religious school openly and avowedly gives a religious atmosphere, as a scientific class does sometimes covertly or unconsciously give a materialistic atmosphere. A secularist teacher has just as much difficulty as a priest would have, in not giving his own answer to the questions that are most worth answering. He also is a little annoyed at not being allowed to put the first things first. He tends more and more to turn his science into a philosophy. It makes the matter too disputable and provocative perhaps to call that philosophy materialistic. It is more polite and equally pointed to call it monistic. But the point is that this philosophy has in it something altogether alien, not only to all religions that refer back to the will of God, but even to all moralities that revolve upon the will of man. Rightly or wrongly, its image of the universe is not that of a post put up with the design of having a lamp on it; it is rather that of a post that grew like a tree; a lamp-post that eventually grew its own lamp. Now considering this vision of vague growth simply as an atmosphere and an impression on the minds of the young, (apart from its truth or falsehood) there is no doubt that it tends so far as it goes to the notion of most things being much of a muchness, being all equally inevitable fruits of the same tree; and certainly not towards the idea of moral choice and conflict; of a contrast between black and white or a battle between light and darkness.
I am not writing controversially or trying to pin anybody with this as an individual necessity. I am writing educationally and considering the probable psychological impression of certain atmospheres and fine shades. I say that a great deal of evolution in education would not make that education very insistent on the ideas of free will and fighting morality; of dramatic choice and challenge. Why should one fruit challenge another fruit on the same tree; or how can there be a black and white choice between its slow gradations of green? So that even if we ignore the primary question of religion in the sense of the purpose of creation, there is the same sort of problem about religion even if we use it in the sense of the purpose of doing good. If a man believes that there is between vice and virtue a chasm like that of life and death, he will want to say so. And if other people only say that everything is a growth of evolution, he will not admit that they have said what he wishes to say. It is not merely a question of secular education that seems indifferent to religion, but of scientific education that seems rather indifferent to ethics. I am talking about educational effects, as educationists do; and decline any sort of sentimental recrimination about the pure and noble aims of men of science. Many who would despise anything so classical as the teaching of rhetoric, are always ready with any amount of rhetoric in praise of the teaching of science. I am not attacking the teaching of science, still less the teachers of science; I am saying the teaching of evolution, if it becomes an atmosphere, cannot be an atmosphere favourable to moral fire or a fighting spirit. To put it shortly, the teaching of evolution is hardly the training for revolution.
It is hardly likely to give a special strength to the feeling that some things are intrinsically intolerable or other things imperatively just. When a reformer can only say to a slave-driver, “You are evolving too slow; you ought to have emerged from the slave-state,” the slave-driver has only to answer, “You are evolving too fast; you ought to wait for the twenty-first century.” Such an argument will hardly set in a flame the fanaticism of Harper’s Ferry. It seems to me, therefore, that the poor Puritans of Tennessee are not altogether wrong, as a matter of educational psychology, if they say that evolutionary education, even if it is not an attack on Christian doctrine, may become an atmosphere very alien to Christian morals; or indeed any manly and combative sort of morals. After the doctrine that existence is a thing of design, the next most interesting doctrine is that life is a thing of choice; and even if men were all taught to be atheists, I doubt whether mere evolutionism would have taught them to be really spirited and warlike atheists. And to see atheists lose their one great virtue of ferocity would indeed be a serious loss to religion.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ISLANDS
From The Venture Annual, 1903
Suppose that in some convulsion of the planets there fell upon this earth from Mars, a creature of a shape totally unfamiliar, a creature about whose actual structure we were of necessity so dark that we could not tell which was creature and which was clothes. We could see that it had, say, six red tufts on its head, but we should not know whether they were a highly respectable head-covering or simply a head. We should see that the tail ended in three yellow stars, but it would be difficult for us to know whether this was part of a ritual or simply a tail. Well, man has been from the beginning of time this unknown monster. People have always differed about what part of him belonged to himself, and what part was merely an accident. People have said successively that it was natural to him to do everything and anything that was diverse and mutually contradictory; that it was natural to him to worship God, and natural to him to be an atheist; natural to him to drink water, and natural to him to drink wine; natural to him to be equal, natural to be unequal; natural to obey kings, natural to kill them. The divergence is quite sufficient to justify us in asking if there are not many things that are really natural, which really appear early and strong in every normal human being, which are not embodied in any of his after affairs. Whether there are not morbidities which are as fresh and recurrent as the flowers of spring. Whether there are not superstitions whose darkness is as wholesome as the darkness that falls nightly on all living things. Whether we have not treated things essential as portents; whether we have not seen the sun as a meteor, a star of ill-luck.
It would at least appear that we tend to become separated from what is really natural, by the fact that we always talk about those people who are really natural as if they were goblins. There are three classes of people, for instance, who are in a greater or less degree elemental: children, poor people, and to some extent, and in a darker and more terrible manner, women. The reason why men have from the beginning of literature talked about women as if they were more or less mad, is simply because women are natural, and men, with their formalities and social theories, are very artificial. It is the same with children; children are simply human beings who are allowed to do what everyone else really desires to do, as for instance, to fly kites, or when seriously wronged to emit prolonged screams for several minutes. So again, the poor man is simply a person who expends upon treating himself and his friends in public houses about the same proportion of his income as richer people spend on dinners or cabs; that is, a great deal more than he ought. But nothing can be done until people give up talking about these people as if they were too eccentric for us to understand, when, as a matter of fact, if there is any eccentricity involved, we are too eccentric to understand them. A poor man, as it is weirdly ordained, is definable as a man who has not got much money; to hear philanthropists talk about him one would think he was a kangaroo. A child is a human being who has not grown up; to hear educationists talk one would think he was some variety of a deep-sea fish. The case of the sexes is at once more obvious and more difficult. The stoic philosophy and the early church discussed woman as if she were an institution, and in many cases decided to abolish her. The modern feminine output of literature discusses man as if he were an institution, and decides to abolish him. It can only timidly be suggested that neither man nor woman is an institution, but things that are really quite natural and all over the place.
If we take children, for instance, as examples of the uncorrupted human animal, we see that the very things which appear in them in a manner primary and prominent, are the very things that philosophers have taught us to regard as sophisticated and over-civilized. The things which really come first are the things which we are accustomed to think come last. The instinct for a pompous intricate and recurring ceremonial, for instance, comes to a child like an organic hunger; he asks for a formality as he might ask for a drink of water.
Those who think, for instance, that the thing called superstition is something heavily artificial, are very numerous; that is those who think that it has only been the power of priests or of some very deliberate system that has built up boundaries, that has called one course of action lawful and another unlawful, that has called one piece of ground sacred and another profane. Nothing it would seem, except a large and powerful conspiracy could account for men so strangely distinguishing between one field and another, between one city and another, between one nation and another. To all those who think in this way there is only one answer to be given. It is to approach each of them and whisper in his ear: “Did you or did you not as a child try to step on every alternate paving-stone? Was that artificial and a superstition? Did priests come in the dead of night and mark out by secret signs the stones on which you are allowed to tread? Were children threatened with the oubliette or the fire of Smithfield if they failed to step on the right stone? Has the Church issued a bill ‘Quisquam non pavemente’?” No! On this point on which we were really free, we invented our servitude. We chose to say that between the first and the third paving-stone there was an abyss of the eternal darkness into which we must not fall. We were walking along a steady and safe and modern road, and it was more pleasant to us to say that we were leaping desperately from peak to peak. Under mean and oppressive systems it was no doubt our instinct to free ourselves. But this truth written on the paving-stones is of even greater emphasis, that under liberal systems it was our instinct to limit ourselves. We limited ourselves so gladly that we limited ourselves at random, as if limitation were one of the adventures of boyhood.
People sometimes talk as if everything in the religious history of man had been done by officials. In all probability things like the Dionysian cult or the worship of the Virgin were almost entirely forced by the people on the priesthood. And if children had been
sufficiently powerful in the State, there is no reason why this paving-stone religion should not have been accepted also. There is no reason why the streets up which we walk should not be emblazoned so as to commemorate the memory of a superstition as healthy as health itself.
For what is the idea in human nature which lies at the back of this almost automatic ceremonialism? Why is it that a child who would be furious if told by his nurse not to walk off the kerbstone, invents a whole desperate system of footholds and chasms in a plane in which his nurse can see little but a commodious level? It is because man has
always had the instinct that to isolate a thing was to identify it. The flag only becomes a flag when it is unique; the nation only becomes a nation when it is surrounded; the hero only becomes a hero when he has before him and behind him men who are not heroes; the paving-stone only becomes a paving stone when it has before it and behind it things that are not paving stones.
There are two other obvious instances, of course, of the same instinct; the perennial poetry of islands, and the perennial poetry of ships. A ship like the Argo or the Fram is valued by the mind because it is an island, because, that is, it carries with it, floating loose on the desolate elements, the resources, and rules and trades, and treasuries of a nation, because it has ranks, and shops and streets, and the whole clinging like a few limpets to a lost spar. An island like Ithaca or England is valued by the mind because it is a ship, because it can find itself alone and self-dependent in a waste of water, because its orchards and forests can be numbered like bales of merchandise, because its corn can be counted like gold, because the starriest and dreariest snows upon its most forsaken peaks are silver flags flown from familiar masts, because its dimmest and most inhuman mines of coal or lead below the roots of things are definite chattels stored awkwardly in the lowest locker of the hold.
In truth, nothing has so much spoilt the right artistic attitude as the continual use of such words as ‘infinite’ and ‘immeasurable’. They were used rightly enough in religion, because religion, by its very nature, consists of paradoxes. Religion speaks of an identity which is
infinite, just as it spoke of an identity that was at once one and three, just as it might possibly and rightly speak of an identity that was at once black and white.
The old mystics spoke of an existence without end or a happiness without end, with a deliberate defiance, as they might have spoken of a bird without wings or a sea without water. And in this they were right philosophically, far more right than the world would now admit because all things grow more paradoxical as we approach the central truth. But for all human imaginative or artistic purposes nothing worse could be said of a work of beauty than that it is infinite; for to be infinite is to be shapeless, and to be shapeless is to be something more than mis-shapen. No man really wishes a thing which he believes to be divine to be in this earthly sense infinite. No one would really like a song to last for ever, or a religious service to last for ever, or even a glass of good ale to last for ever. And this is surely the reason that men have pursued towards the idea of holiness, the course that they have pursued; that they have marked it out in particular spaces, limited it to particular days, worshipped an ivory statue, worshipped a lump of stone. They have desired to give to it the chivalry and dignity of definition, they have desired to save it from the degradation of infinity. This is the real weakness of all imperial or conquering ideals in nationality. No one can love his country with the particular affection which is appropriate to the relation, if he thinks it is a thing in its nature indeterminate, something which is growing in the night, something which lacks the tense excitement of a boundary. No Roman citizen could feel the same when once it became possible for a rich Parthian or a rich Carthaginian to become a Roman citizen by waving his hand. No man wishes the thing he loves to grow, for he does not wish it to alter. No man would be pleased if he came home in the evening from work and found his wife eight feet high.
The dangers upon the side of this transcendental insularity are no doubt considerable. There lies in it primarily the great danger of the thing called idolatry, the worship of the object apart from or against the idea it represents. But he must surely have had a singular
experience who thinks that this insular or idolatrous fault is the particular fault of one age. We are likely to suffer primary painful resemblance to the men of Thermopylae, the Zealots, who raged round the fall of Jerusalem. If we are rushing upon any destruction it is not, at least, upon this.
PART FOUR: AT HOME AND ABROAD
ON HOLIDAYS
THERE ARE epochs of history which their enemies call rude and which their friends call simple. My difficulty is that they seem to me not simple, but subtle. They understood much better than we do the idea of variety and reaction. For them emancipation was a recoil and not merely a release. The world must be turned upside down at absolute intervals, as a bucket must be turned upside down in order to empty it. It is the essence of a holiday that it must be a revolution, and it is the essence of a revolution that it must revolve. A revolution far more frightful and overwhelming than any of the revolutions of history happens every twelve hours. We do, quite seriously, die daily. We trust ourselves in utter dark and dissolution; in such black sleep as has killed many men by a drug or by the drifting snow. Each of us has every night an enormous negative holiday. But most will agree, I think, that the essence of that holiday is its irresponsibility. The legal authorities would be kept busy if we could be indicted for the crimes we have committed in dreams. Now the whole point of a holiday was to be, within certain rational restraints, irresponsible. Interfering with a holiday was almost like interfering with a dream. And the whole project of using holidays as anything else but holidays was really absent from the mind. The notion of ‘combining amusement with instruction’ would have seemed like the notion of combining sleep with insomnia. Great spiritual authorities have told us to watch and pray. Great spiritual influences, I think, also tell us to believe and sleep. But neither god nor priest nor devil ever had the impudence to tell us to watch and sleep.
And that is the contradiction made by the modern cranks about holidays. It would be a typical and triumphant work of modern science to take charge of a child day and night; to give him the drugs that would keep him half asleep all day, and the dreams that would keep him half awake all night.
In this connection I think the educational arrangement about holidays has long been a ludicrous mistake. Holiday tasks are a mistake. Home-work is a mistake. Give the boy or girl less holidays if you think they need less. But be sufficiently businesslike to get the best out of the boy or girl for whatever concession you make to them. If you can excuse anyone from work, you can excuse him from worry. Leisure is a food, like sleep; liberty is a food, like sleep. Leisure is a matter of quality rather than quantity. Five minutes lasts longer when one cannot be disturbed than five hours when one may be disturbed. Restrict the liberty in point of time; restrict it in point of space; but do not restrict it in point of quality. If you give somebody only three seconds’ holiday—then, by all the remains of your ruined sense of honour, leave him alone for three seconds.
Let me take an example which involves a particular sort of holiday that is fairly popular and national. During the summer, the big railway stations will be found thronged with the bags and babies of innumerable families going to seaside resorts. Each traveller is (I need hardly say) murmuring to himself the lines of Swinburne:
“I will go down to the great white mother… Mother and maker of men, the sea; I will go down to her, I and none other…”
A friend of mine regards these lines as unreasonable, declaring that Swinburne, however much he liked sea-bathing, should not insist on all the seas of the world being locked up like his private bathroom. But certainly the request, whether reasonable or not, would be very difficult to enforce, say, at Margate or Broadstairs. But even if it be true, as I were loth to believe, that some holiday-makers do not murmur Swinburne’s lines as they start, I am still firmly convinced that most holiday-makers like the sea because it is some kind of outlook upon some kind of loneliness and liberty. It is the only kind of loneliness and liberty. It is the only plain, straight line in Nature. It is the only empty place on earth. It is the one open window; to Jones, as it was to Keats.
I think it was Richard Jefferies who said that all men ought to be idle; and that we should get all the work we wanted done by harnessing to our machinery the tremendous tides of the sea. Something analogous was suggested by Mr. Wells; but I disagree with it. I think it would destroy the holiday. We should have removed all the use of the seaside by removing the uselessness of the sea. Men jaded or dazed with duties wish to look out across that fruitless field, in which God has sown we know not what seed and shall raise we know not what harvest. They wish to behold how enormous is their irresponsibility. The sea blows upon the cashier at Margate the great good news that he is not God. But this holiday sentiment will continue to weaken so long as men try to make all our holidays duties, or all our days holidays; and cannot understand that when anything is being woven the shuttle flies back and forth.
THE PEASANT
THE GENIUS who shall write a real philosophical pantomime (a thing untried, I think, since Aristophanes) should find many handy symbols in the harlequinades of our youth. The donkey who comes in two suggests infinite speculations about organic unity and by divergent evolution. The policeman made into sausages would be excellent machinery either for a Socialistic satire or for a satire on Socialism. And the red-hot poker quite exactly expresses that most terrible and profound thing in human affairs—a fierce domesticity.
But there is another trick of the old pantomimes which happens to offer the only parallel I can think of to the strange state of our society today. We all remember that beginning of the Transformation Scene when the front scene is still there, but the back scene begins to glow through it. The heroine is still in the dungeon; but the walls grow more and more transparent; and something else (probably the Garden of the Fairy Volatile) is apparent at the same time.
I have exactly the same sensations about our old Victorian political methods and the social realities that are now behind them. I do not ignore the old front scene of Privy Council or Parliament; I can still see it there; it is the England of my boyhood, and I rather like it. But simultaneously with these symbolic figures, these representatives and estates of the realm, I can see the Things that are behind. Another England is shining through political England; whether it will be very like the Garden of the Fairy Volatile remains to be seen. This fact, that the Government and the Commonwealth are often on two different planes of reality, has one peculiar result, too little noticed, on our attitude towards foreigners. There are the same names all over Europe—Parliament, Army, Church, Land, and so on. But these words often stand for astonishingly different things; for widely varying degrees of realism or ritual or memory or conspiracy or indifference. When a man has even one concrete experience of some foreign thing, he will generally find it to be in quite another world from that foreign country as it appears in the newspapers. A man reading the best English journals would have the general impression that the chief event in France is the sudden fall of the Ministry which came as abruptly as that tragic blow out of the air which a few weeks before had struck one of its members dead where he stood.
Now I happened to be in France when the news of this tragedy was scattered abroad, and I want to try and convey an atmosphere which I felt, and which I felt to be France itself. To us in England France seemed to be full of all this crisis and disaster. This was something like what one felt upon the actual scene of it.
I was away in those eastern highlands, where France (so to speak) clings to the rising mountains, till they break away and shoot up into the sky as Switzerland. More to the north was that gap that is the great gate into Germany and is guarded by the Lion of Belfort. Among these hills I met a peasant who was like thousands of the peasants all round: a Jack-of-all-trades. Among other things he owned a ramshackle carriage with an excellent horse, with which he could drive me anywhere; and he was, as far as appearance goes, rather like a very rude beggar. His clothes were coarse and threadbare, his face was rugged, but sharp; he was always in a sweat from drudgeries. A man who looked like that would be ‘moved on’ in London if he tried to open the door of a cab. Well, I got him to drive me away over the hills, and, finding that the mountains grew taller, grander, and (one might say) more incredible at every turn of the road, I persuaded him to make a day’s journey of it, and to rest the horse in a high village where (as everywhere in that country) one could get good wine and bread and an omelette at least.
Now, when I stopped before the cottage that could thus become an impromptu inn, I did exactly what every Englishman of my unfortunate class would have done in my place. I addressed the driver with nervous cordiality and extreme vagueness and said that I supposed he would like to have some lunch too, offering him a few francs for the purpose. He did not understand what it meant. He said I had better pay for the carriage at the end. I said it again, and still it was a puzzle to him. I said it again, in French which, however bad, was at least unmistakable; and this time I made myself clear. Whereupon this amazing scarecrow burst into an ungovernable fit of laughter, and slapped his trouser pocket about six times with his squat spread hand, exclaiming, “Money! I have much! I have mountains! I am rich! I am very rich!” And after the conversation I had with him on the road home, I think it perfectly possible that he was considerably richer than I am.
He talked about his dog, which was the best dog in the world; his son, who was the most promising cook in the world; his horse, which was the most astonishing horse in the world; he seemed to find inexhaustible glories in his patch of property. At the end of the journey, warned by that prodigy of the noon, I offered him no extra tip, but only two good cigars that somebody had given me. He at once replied by giving me a bottle of the wine he manufactured himself. It was, he assured me, the best wine in the world.
That is all that happened; only as we drove into the town the papers were flaring with the dreadful death of the French Minister of War and the narrow escape of the French Premier. My friend had never heard of either of them; he took no interest in politics. I think he thought politics a sort of mutiny among slaves. He was a free man. I think my sociological friends really ought to remember that there are many millions of him in Europe.
THE LOST RAILWAY STATION
I AM writing this as best I may in a Scottish railway station; and my thoughts go back, with all the pathos of the patriot, to an English railway station. Trucks and rails may seem to lack the fine shades of variety to be felt in the trees and hills of home; but my fancy really flies to an English railway station where I once dreamed a dream.
There is in the north of London an important station, which is by comparison as quiet and comfortable as the courtyard of an old inn. I do not know why this repose rests upon it, for a considerable train service is connected with it. It has the usual bookstall, at which I have bought all the bloodiest detective stories I could find; various refreshment bars at which I have bought various other things; and all the usual fittings of such a place. But in the centre there stands a fountain, and not far from it a large model of an ocean liner. Something about the look of the fountain and the surrounding hostelries, jutting out on opposite sides, reminds me absurdly of the market-place of a village; though perhaps some thing of a pantomime village. I can imagine the village maiden leaning gracefully on the fountain with a jar or jug or bucket; though I hasten to admit that I have never seen her do so. I can even conceive that the little boy who ran away to sea (that picturesque figure, whose presence, or rather absence, is so essential to the health of the happy village) drank in all his desire of seafaring adventure at the ends of the earth by looking at the toy liner. His white-haired mother would still be waiting for him—presumably in the waiting room. In short, I have always felt that I could fill this place with all the recognized romantic figures of rural life, in fiction if not in fact.
I wonder what would really happen if in some special convulsion that station were really cut off and left to live its own simple life, like a farm surrounded by floods, or a hamlet snowed up in the mountains. It pleases me to fancy that a railway strike might go on so long that people forgot the very purpose of a railway station. Railway porters would not even know that they were railway porters; and even the stationmaster would be ignorant of the mysterious secret of his mastery. Most of us have had a fancy that all society is like that strange railway station; that its social actions have some hieratic significance lost before the beginning of history; that it was made it knows not why; and is waiting for it knows not what. For the end of such a play or parable would be some thing truly terrific, like the Day of Judgment. When the signals changed colours at last, it would truly be like the moon turning to blood in the Apocalypse. Something utterly unthinkable, like the thunder and the seals and trumpets of the Last Day, would transform my quiet railway-station. A train would come in at last.
But my fancy chiefly rests on the remote generations of the future in this simple community, descended from the original primitive marriages between a few railway porters and a few barmaids. By that time the little commonwealth ought to have a whole tangle of traditions ultimately to be traced back to the lost idea of a train. Perhaps people would still go religiously to the ticket-office at intervals, as to a kind of confessional box; and there recite the names of far-off and by this time fabulous places; the word ‘Harrow’ sounding like the word ‘Heaven’ or the word ‘Ealing’ like the word ‘Eden’. For this society would of course, like every other, produce sceptics; that is men who had lost their social memory. All sorts of quaint ceremonials would survive, and would be scoffed at as irrational, because their rational origin had been obscured. At a date centuries hence, the clock in the refreshment room would still be kept a little fast, as compared with the clock in the station. There would be most complicated controversies about this custom; turning on things behind the times and things in advance of the age. The bookstall would have come to be something like the Bodleian or the great lost library of Alexandria; a storehouse of ancestral documents of primitive antiquity and profound obscurity; and learned men would be found spelling their way through a paragraph in one of our daily papers, deluded with the ever-vanishing hope of finding a sort of human meaning in it. The fountain seems to be the only possible religious centre of the village; though I think the mysterious image of the great ship should be the type of some faint adventurous memory and adventurous hope; a vague hint of things beyond; perhaps a great legend like that of the Argo. But a fountain is clearly the more human and historic site for a shrine. It would be dedicated, I hope, to a saint; as are so many springs and wells all over Christendom. And now I come to think of it, the very name of this railway station, like so much also that sounds cockney and commonplace, has an origin presumably religious. There could hardly be a more beautiful combination of words and ideas than that which I imagine to lie behind the prosaic name of Marylebone.
I had intended to draw a moral, or many morals from this vision. I had intended to point out how much our own society suffers from a similar paradox; not that its institutions are meaningless; but on the contrary, that they have a meaning, which would be found again if the society woke up and went to work again. It is only because they are asleep that they seem to be senseless. If the trains were running, if the traditions were working, the traditions would be instantly recognized as reasonable. Thus the modern world does not really suffer from scurry, but rather from slumber. I had in mind especially what I may call the Allegory of the Lost Luggage, or of the Cloak Room, which is concerned with the philosophy of property. Property is still being defended by a dim sense of duty; though it is really held up in transit and accumulated in the wrong place. But I cannot pursue my guess; for something has happened in the Scotch railway station which dissipates all my dreams of the happier English railway station. My train has come in.
BETHLEHEM AND THE GREAT CITIES
I WAS once at the same dinner-table with a newspaper proprietor who regarded himself, and was regarded, as the dictator of Europe and who really was by far too great an extent the dictator of England. He also was interested in Palestine, and in the course of conversation I learned that he had never even heard of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. I suppose he had seen Crusaders in pictures or at fancy-dress balls; but he had no notion of what they did, and certainly no notion that what they did was to conquer and make Palestine a part of Europe for a hundred years, filling it with abbeys like those of Glastonbury or St. Andrew’s and castles like those of Conway and Caernarvon. Now that is a point that interests me a great deal because the traces of it are very obvious to any traveller who happens to have been there. The first fact that strikes him about Jerusalem is that it is a medieval town; long before it strikes him specially as an oriental town. It has that curious combination of cosiness and defiance that belongs to the walled cities and painted pales and fences of the life of the Middle Ages. The latest walls were built by the successors of the Saracens but they are not in our sense Saracenic. Most of the windows and gates are in their whole spirit Gothic. The Franciscan going by with his beard and brown habit under those grey Gothic walls seems to be entirely in the picture, and even in the conventional picture. It is rather the Arab coming in with his coloured turban or burnous who seems for the moment, if only by a sort of optical illusion, to be a stranger and one straying from a far-off eastern land.
I had a rather parallel experience when I first saw Rome. In the case of Rome, as in the case of Jerusalem, people seem to have lost their own first impressions in the disproportionate emphasis of detail among guides and guide-books. The general impression of Rome is not the Forum or even the Coliseum. We might almost say that they are to St. Peter’s what Stonehenge is to Salisbury Cathedral. The overwhelming impression is not that of Pagan but of Papal Rome; but especially Rome of the Renaissance Popes. I say it is the overwhelming impression; it could not be to every body a pleasing impression. It might annoy a man, not only if he were narrowly Puritan, but also if he were too narrowly medieval. It did annoy Ruskin and might well have annoyed William Morris. Nor is their criticism a thing merely to be criticized; there is in that classical exuberance much that is really florid and false. But that is the impression; and it is quite certainly the stamp and imprint of the great Popes of the Renaissance. Renaissance Rome is not merely heathen, any more than Jerusalem is merely Jewish or merely Moslem. In those huge fountains where the Tritons look like Titans in the twilight, they have none the less been really baptized by these waters. The cross on top of the primeval obelisks is not a contradiction but a culmination. The culmination culminates on that high column where Our Lady stands at once vanquishing and exalting the symbol of Diana, with her foot upon the horns of the moon.
I have mentioned these two cases for the sake of a truth which any real traveller will have found out for himself. Our recent and rather provincial tradition greatly exaggerated the proportion of such places that is pagan or barbaric or even merely primeval. There is much more than we were taught to suppose of the traces of civilization, and even of our own civilization. But as my memory returns to Palestine by this rambling path, I remember what may really be called, in a deeper and more subtle sense, an exception. Palestine itself was filled, so to speak, with Norman castles and Catholic shrines; and in so far as Jerusalem does often suggest the Moslem, it is chiefly because the Moslem does suggest the Crusaders. But there was one experience in Palestinian travel that really is something more than merely historical; something that is too human to be historical. It is certainly not pagan but it is in a sense primeval. It is the one thing that really does seem to be connected with Christianity and not with Christendom. I have called it primeval, because there is in this greatest of all origins an atmosphere truly to be called original. This one vision really does not primarily suggest pilgrimages and shrines and medieval spires or medieval spears. It does rather suggest ancestral dawns and mystical abysses and the end of chaos and the creation of light. I mean the experience of Bethlehem.
The heart of Bethlehem is a cavern; the sunken shrine which is the traditional scene of the Nativity. Nine times out of ten these traditions are true, and this is wholly ratified by the truth about the countryside; for it is into such subterranean stables that the people have driven their cattle, and they are by far the likeliest places of refuge for such a homeless group. It is curious to consider what numberless and varied versions of the Bethlehem story have been turned into pictures. No man who understands Christianity will complain that they are all different from each other and all different from the truth, or rather the fact. It is the whole point of the story that it happened in one particular human place that might have been any particular human place; a sunny colonnade in Italy or a snow-laden cottage in Sussex. It is yet more curious that some modern artists have prided themselves on merely topographical truth; and yet have not made much of this truth about the dark and sacred place underground. It seems strange that they have hardly emphasized the one case in which realism really touches reality. There is something beyond expression moving to the imagination in the idea of the holy fugitives being brought lower than the very land; as if the earth had swallowed them; the glory of God like gold buried in the ground. Perhaps the image is too deep for art, even in the sense of dealing in another dimension. For it might be difficult for any art to convey simultaneously the divine secret of the cavern and the cavalcade of the mysterious kings, trampling the rocky plain and shaking the cavern roof. Yet the medieval pictures would often represent parallel scenes on the same canvas; and the medieval popular theatre, which the guildsmen wheeled about the streets, was sometimes a structure of three floors, with one scene above another. A parallel can be found in those tremendous lines of Francis Thompson:
East, ah, east of Himalay Dwell the nations underground, Hiding from the shock of Day; From the sun’s uprising sound.
But no poetry even of the greatest poets will ever express all that is hidden in that image of the light of the world like a subterranean sun; only these prosaic notes remain to suggest what one individual felt about Bethlehem.
THE SACREDNESS OF SITES
IT IS impossible to make a list of the things that humanitarians do not know about humanity. On thousands of things the men who talk most of the common bond are ignorant of what is really common. Among a thousand of such things may be mentioned the instinct about the sacredness of sites. If there is one thing that men have proved again and again it is that even when they furiously burn down a temple, they like to put another on top of it. They do not, generally speaking, want to worship St. George except on the very spot where they once worshipped the Dragon. And even when they have altered the universe they do not alter the situation. What is the reason for this, and whether it is some hitherto nameless need of human nature, or whether there be indeed something behind those ancient legends of the genius loci, or spirit of the place, need not now be discussed. But it is certain that throughout all history there has been a rhythm of expansion and contraction from certain centres; and that, unless we would be as superficial as the shallowest journalists, we can see under all changes that these centres remain. It is commonplace that empires pass away, because empires were never very important. Empires are frivolous things, the fringes of a sprawling culture that has sprawled too far. Cities do not pass away, or very seldom pass away, because the city is the cell of our organic formation; and even those living in the vast void of empire can find no phrase for social duty, save to tell men to be good citizens.
Empires pass away almost as if to accentuate the fact that cities do not pass away. At least five empires have successively claimed suzerainty over little Jerusalem upon the hill; and they are all now mere names—Egypt and Babylon and Persia and Macedonia and Rome; and for those unaffected by names these are unimportant. But Jerusalem is not unimportant; it is, at this very moment when I write, the scene of surging and threatening conflict. There was a Byzantine Empire and there is still a Turkish Empire, and one may soon be as dead as the other; but it will always matter who holds San Sophia and the town of Constantine upon the Golden Horn. Paris is older than France and York is older than England; and Cologne is immeasurably older than Germany. These centres of civilization have something in them more magnetic and immortal even than nationality, let alone mere vulgar imperialism. Ghosts haunt houses, they say, and the ghosts of whole people haunt whole cities, till half Europe is like a haunted house. It is only dull materialists who can wander away into any material environment. The spirit and all that is spiritual returns to its own environment. The world ebbs back again to its cities, to its centres; it is true, as I have said, of many cities; it is most true of the most central city of Rome.
Everything was done to take away the Roman character from Rome. The Emperor was taken away, but the Pope remained. The Pope was taken away, but the Pope returned. The former could not make a new Rome at Byzantium. The latter could not make a new Rome at Avignon. The former experiment had behind it the great civilization of the Greeks, the latter had behind it the great civilization of the French. The Greek Emperors thought they could move it easily to the East and the French Kings that they could move it easily to the West. But Rome, especially Christian Rome, is a rock not easily to be moved; and in the course of but a few centuries, as history goes, she had seen the French Monarchy go down before the Jacobins as she had seen the Greek Empire go down before the Moslems.
I am now about to utter a sentence of familiar and horrid cant, which I fear may be respectfully received. It is said everywhere, in a sense that is quite false; and yet, strangely enough, it is quite true. I am going to say that the world is not yet ready for enforced international peace and disarmament in Europe. In all the welter of wordy hypocrisy that makes so much of modern culture and moral science, I know nothing so contemptible, as a rule, as that evolutionary excuse about the world not being ripe. It is said by Socialists who do not want to leave off being Capitalists. It is said by war-profiteers who would like one more war to make them millionaires, and then eternal peace; or by high-minded gluttons and epicures who would like their grandchildren to be vegetarians. So the employer may go on sweating because the world is not ready for Communism; or the huckster may go on swindling because the social evolution of man has not yet reached the point of common honesty; or the politician may bribe and be bribed at leisure, because the social prophets have calculated an exact and distant date for Utopia. But they can all sweat and swindle, and bribe hopefully, happily, with radiant faces, because Utopia is sure to come some time— and for somebody else. Ninety times out of a hundred this moral distinction is false and cowardly; but in this special case, for one special reason, it does really apply. I doubt very much whether there will ever be a time when there will be no war. I cannot imagine how there can be a time in which there can be no war. But I do believe that, if the life of Europe evolves in one particular way, there may yet be something very like real European unity; an international understanding that would really prevent many international misunderstandings. But of that development it really is true to say that it has not happened yet, and that, until it has happened, we must not act as if it had.
Human unity is a huge and overwhelming truth, in the face of which all differences of continent or country are flattened out. European unity is an ancient fundamental and sometimes invisible truth, which every white man will discover if he meets another white man in Central Africa or unpenetrated Tibet. But national unity is a truth; and a truth which cannot, must not, and will not be denied, but chiefly for these very reasons— that nationality is human and that nationality is European. The man who forgets nationality instantly becomes less human and less European. He seems somehow to have turned into a walking abstraction, a resolution of some committee, a programme of some political movement, and to be by some unmistakable transformation, striking chill like the touch of a fish, less of a living man. The European man is a man through his patriotism and the particular civilization of his people. The cosmopolitan is not a European, still less a good European. He is a traveller in Europe, as if he were a tourist from the moon. In other words, what has happened is this; that for good or evil, European history has produced European nations by a European process; they are the organs of the organic life of our race, at least in recent times; and unless we receive our natural European inheritance through those natural organs, we do not really receive it at all. We receive something else; a priggish and provincial abstraction, invented by a few modern and more or less ignorant men. So long as those organs are the only organs of a living tradition, we must live by them; and it is true to say that the time has not yet come for all the nations living by a tradition that they can all hold and inherit together. It means finding something that good men love even more than they love their country. And modern Europe has not got it yet.
I will not argue here about how Europe is to get it; but I would suggest that it might possibly begin by returning to the civic origins. I mean that the countries may not expand to the continents, but rather return to the cities. Humanity may find in the cities what might yet become a universal citizenship, as it did with the cities of antiquity. But it could only happen with the cities that are really antique. It would mean the sort of cities which we only call ancient because they are still alive. But it would repose on the real and profoundly human sentiment about sites, for sites are generally shrines.
SCIPIO AND THE CHILDREN
I HAVE lately found myself in the town of Tarragona; famous for its vinegar, which it wisely sends abroad, rather than the wine, which it still more wisely drinks at home. I have myself ordered a fair amount of the wine; I omitted to order any of the vinegar. These things are an allegory; for there is something of the same contrast between the acid taste of party politics, especially anti-clerical politics, which is all that is exported to the English papers from Spain, and the rich and joyful vintage of popular life and humour, of which nobody can get the gusto except by going to Spain. I have always noted that there is never anything new in the news; and the things which the traveller recognizes are never the things that the journalist reports. For instance, the thing that struck me first and last in Spain was the Spanish children; especially the Spanish little boys, and their relation to the Spanish fathers of the Spanish little boys. The love of fathers and sons in this country is one of the great poems of Christendom; it has, like a bewildering jewel, a hundred beautiful aspects, and especially that supremely beautiful aspect; that it is a knock in the eye for that nasty-minded old pedant Freud.
I was sitting at a cafe table with another English traveller, and I was looking at a little boy with a bow and arrows, who discharged very random shafts in all directions, and periodically turned in triumph and flung himself into the arms of his father, who was a waiter. That part of the scene was repeated all over the place, with fathers of every social type and trade. And it is no good to tell me that such humanities must be peculiar to the progressive and enlightened Catalans, in that this incident happened in a Catalan town, for I happen to remember that I first noticed the fact in Toledo and afterwards even more obviously in Madrid. And it is no good to tell me that Spaniards are all gloomy and harsh and cruel, for I have seen the children; I have also seen the parents. I might be inclined to call them spoilt children; except that it seems as if they could not be spoilt. I may also remark that one element whch specially haunts me, in the Spanish Peninsula, is the very elusive element called Liberty. Nobody seems to have the itch of interference; nobody is moved by that great motto of so much social legislation; “Go and see what Tommy is doing, and tell him he mustn’t.” Considering what this Tommy was doing, I am fairly sure that in most progressive countries, somebody would tell him he mustn’t. He shot an arrow that hit his father; probably because he was aiming at something else. He shot an arrow that hit me; but I am a BROAD target. His bow and his archery were quite inadequate; and would not have been tolerated in the scientific Archery School into which he would no doubt have been instantly drafted in any state in which sport is taken as seriously as it should be. While I was staring at him, and at some other little boys who had assembled, also to stare at him, the English traveller interrupted my dream by saying suddenly:
“What is there to see in Tarragona?”
I was instantly prompted to answer, and almost did answer,
“Why, of course, the boy with the bow and arrows! There is also the waiter.”
But I stopped myself in time, remembering the strange philosophy of sightseeing; and then I found my mind rather a blank. I knew next to nothing about the town, and said so. I said the Cathedral was very fine; and then added with increasing vagueness; “I’m afraid I don’t know anything at all about Tarragona. I have a hazy idea that Scipio got buried here or born here. I can’t even remember which.”
“Who was it who was buried or born?” he inquired patiently.
“Scipio,” I said, with an increasing sense of weakness; then I added as in feeble self-defence, “Africanus.”
He inquired whether I meant that the man was an African. I feared, in any case, that the word ‘African’ would not instantly summon up before his imagination the figure of St. Augustine; or even of Hannibal. It would more probably suggest to him a coal-black negro. So I said that I was sure he was not an African; I believed he was a Roman; certainly he was a Roman General; and I thought it was too early in history for a Roman General to have really belonged to what were afterwards the Roman Provinces. I had always understood that Carthage, or the Carthaginian influence, practically prevailed over all these parts at that time. And even as I said the words a thought came to me, like a blinding and even a blasting light.
The traveller was very legitimately bored. After the mysterious manner of his kind, he was not bored with sightseeing, but he was bored with history; especially ancient history. I do not blame him for that; I only puzzle upon why a man bored with history should take endless trouble to visit historic sites. He was patently one of those who think that all those things happened such a long time ago that they cannot make much difference now. But it had suddenly occurred to me that this rather remote example really might, perhaps, make a great deal of difference now. I tried to tell him so; and he must have formed the impression that I was raving mad.
“Would it be all the same,” I asked, “if that little boy were thrown into a furnace as a religious ceremony, when his family went to church on Sunday? That is what Carthage did; it worshipped Moloch; and sacrificed batches of babies as a regular religious ritual. That is what Scipio Africanus did; he defeated Carthage, when it had nearly defeated the world. Somehow, I seem to feel a fine shade of difference.”
My companion did not reply; and I continued to watch the archer; and though Apollo was a Pagan god, I am glad that such a sun-god slew the Punic Python; and that even before the Faith, those ancient arrows cast down Moloch for us all.
THE REAL ISSUE
THE FOLLOWING incident took place the other day outside a crowded cafe in Paris. It also took place outside half a hundred other cafes in Paris and half a million other cafes scattered through about two-thirds of Christendom. The incident or something like it, was so natural as to seem trivial in such places; and probably nobody noticed it except two persons seated near that one small table. One of them was a wealthy American lady who had seen the sights of Paris. The other was a journalist, astray in foreign parts, who had resolutely refused to see them.
There sat at this small table a poor Frenchman with his wife and child; he was rather shabbier than what we should call an artisan, but he was probably a small shopkeeper; he was independent; it had never occurred to him to pretend to be a gentleman. He and his wife each proceeded to sip a very tall glass of very light beer, called a bock, and to look out cheerfully at the coloured lights and the motley procession of mankind passing under them. The little boy threw his arms round his father’s neck with sudden affection; for he was quite ignorant, had never read even the most elementary text-book of Psycho-Analysis and did not know anything about Oedipus. Then his father gave him, equally impulsively, a gulp out of his glass of beer. The little boy then turned and embraced his mother, who also, moved by a sense of symmetry and equality, gave him another gulp out of her glass of beer. At that moment a lame man came by begging; and the man at the table (who would have been turned away from many of our respectable houses as a beggar himself), took some small coins from his pocket and gave them to the child, with a few words in an undertone. The child then gave them to the beggar. That was all. But one of the two strangers in that city knew he had been looking at the palladium and high citadel, round which rages the whole human war of our civilization and our century; and that all men are divided precisely and sharply by what they think of that one thing. Those who understand it are on one side and those who do not understand it on the other. The former see a thousand things and generally say very little about them. They understand that ritual is natural and not artificial. They understand what is really meant by the equality of the sexes: “In this we both have a part and he in us, equally.”
They understand that the world ends when that trinity is really broken, whether by confounding the persons or dividing the substance. They understand the word ‘sacrament’, which is simply senseless gibberish to everybody else. They understand that politics and economics and every thing practical means providing the huge human cafe with such tables—but separate tables. They understand that when this has been done as fully and fairly as possible, there will still always be somebody limping by; and that he must not be forgotten. Above all, they understand the impulse that makes the most innocent the intermediary and the almoner; they understand propitiation and the priest.
There are also other kinds of people. For the well-dressed American rose from her table with a sort of snort and went on her way to see the sights of Paris. We must not be hard on her; in truth the poor lady suffered from delusions; for she laboured under the extraordinary notion that she had seen ignorant people giving a child Alcohol; and she was ridden with a sort of nightmare, to the effect that a beggar is a horrible thing.
PART FIVE: THE SPICE OF LIFE
THE COMIC CONSTABLE
SOME LITTLE time ago a small, strange incident occurred to me which is not without its application to the history and quality of this country. I was sitting quietly in rustic retirement, endeavouring to feel as bucolic as possible, when I was summoned to the telephone, not perhaps the most bucolic of institutions. Nor, indeed, was it the voice of any other ale house gaffer that addressed me through the instrument, but the voice of a man I know on one of the big London dailies.
He said, “We hear you’ve been made Constable of Beaconsfield.”
I said, “Then your hearing is defective.”
He said after a pause. “Well, but haven’t you been made Constable of Beaconsfield?” “Why, of course not,” I said. “Have you been made Pope of Rome? Am I a person whom any sane men (except perhaps the criminals) would want to have for a constable?”
“Well,” replied my friend doubtfully, “It’s down in the ‘Daily Gazette’, anyhow. ‘Mr. G. K. Chesterton has been nominated as a Parish Constable of Beaconsfield.’”
“And a jolly good joke, too,” I answered. “I thought you had a more vivid and vulgar sense of humour.”
“We may take it, then, that the thing is a hoax?” said the inquisitor. “You may indeed,” I said, “and apparently a successful one.” I then hung up the receiver and went back and tried to feel bucolic again.
When I had tried for three minutes the telephone rang again. A well-known weekly illustrated paper had important business with me.
“We hear,” said a grave voice, “that you are now Parish Constable of Beaconsfield, and any experiences of yours in that capacity—”
“I am not Parish Constable of Beaconsfield,” I cried in a tearful rage, “nor am I Senior Wrangler, nor Gold Stick in Waiting, nor the Grand Lama, nor the Living Skeleton, nor the Derby Favourite, nor the Queen of Love and Beauty at an approaching tournament. Has the human race lost all notion of a joke?”
I went back somewhat impatiently to my bucolic efforts; and then another bell rang, this time the front-door bell. I was informed that the representative of yet a third paper (an illustrated daily this time) had come down all the way from London with a camera to photograph me as a Parish Constable. I do not know whether he thought to find me in some flamboyant uniform, with feathers and epaulettes, or whether he merely wished to snapshot the new and rapturous expression of my face after receiving the appointment. Anyhow, I told him he was welcome to photograph me as much as he chose in the character of “The Man Who is not Parish Constable of Beaconsfield.” He photographed me in a number of highly unconstabulary attitudes (calculated in themselves to refute the slander), and then he went away.
It happened that about a quarter of an hour afterwards a local Beaconsfield acquaintance dropped in for ten minutes’ talk, and to him I recounted with mingled entertainment and fury how all these experienced journalists had been taken in by a joke that seemed to me as obvious as anything in a comic paper. “I suppose,” I said, “that whenever Punch playfully suggests I caused the earthquake at San Francisco by sitting down in Beaconsfield, I shall have to write to The Times about it, and clear my character.”
My local friend listened with interest to the farce, laughed at the inquiring newspaper, was amiably amused at the disappointed photographer, and at the end said very quietly and casually, “All the same, you know, you are nominated as a Parish Constable of Beaconsfield.”
I turned, stiff with astonishment; I saw the shocking sincerity in his eyes,
“But this is madness,” I cried, “It must be a joke.”
“If it is,” he said, apologetically, “it is a joke written up on the church door.”
My wits were scattered to the four winds; I collected them with difficulty. I could not fancy that those who go to a modern parish church would permit such a thing as a practical joke in the porch. It was no time for half measures, but rather for desperate ones. It was clearly necessary to go to church.
My friend and I walked to the stone entrance of that strong and fine building, and there, sure enough, stood in cold print the openly crazy statement that some five men, including Mr. G. K. Chesterton, had been nominated as Parish Constables, and that objections to them would be entertained. Unless Englishmen have lost their historic fire, those objections should be prompt and overwhelming. On the way back my friend fortified and consoled me by describing the institution which had thus forcibly descended on me like an extinguisher. I have since received a letter from a kind correspondent including much the same technicalities, for which I am very grateful; but at the time the explanation was a little confusing. The only thing I clearly remember out of the tangle of rules is this; that I must not go officially beyond the bounds of my Constablewick, “except in hot pursuit of a fugitive.” I may be enticed to toss myself over a spiked wall into Middlesex; but only if a fleet-footed burglar has tossed himself over it before my eyes. I may be observed any day leaping across the Thames into Berkshire, but only when some panting bigamist has leapt it just before me. I can most earnestly and even austerely promise that on ordinary occasions I shall permit myself no such impetuous trespass.
But we will not dwell upon the duties, because there are no duties; nor upon the salary, because there is no salary; nor upon the uniform (the only thing I really regret) because, alas! there is no uniform. But if we consider the thing itself, and why so wild a joke ever came to be possible as the present writer being a constable, we may find ourselves facing some rather curious and interesting elements in the old life of England. The institution of the Parish Constable dates from the time when there was no official and efficient police; but when there was a great deal of incidental local sentiment and local self-government. In short, the Parish Constable belongs to another age, when there was not really such a thing as a constable, but when there was such a thing as a parish. The very form of his appointment breathes of a somewhat breezier age; for (as in my own case) he is not even asked if he will stand. This suggests the jolly time when there was no nonsense about wanting to serve your country; no buying of peerages by breeding cattle; no climbing into rich idleness by means of ‘polite work’.
Doubtless it is august and dignified to be a constable. So it is august and dignified to be a juryman; for to be a juryman is to be a judge, but in nothing is the jury system more medieval (that is, more human) than in the fact that it takes for granted that every good man will primarily care more for his babies or his bullocks than for the codes and thrones of legality; and that, therefore, he must be summoned to a jury. That is perhaps what Christ meant when he described the Kingdom of Heaven as sending into the highways and byeways, and compelling them to come in; perhaps He meant that if you want the simple and modest mortal you must call him. However this may be with the Kingdom of Heaven, it is assuredly so with the Kingdom of Earth. The other method leaves us open to that offensive class which comes without being called, the vulgarly and basely ambitious, who are already destroying England.
The other element in the case is so very long that I will here make it very short. The Parish Constable, nominated by a District Council, is one of the very few reminders of a certain natural notion of self-government which modern science and modern discipline have made very difficult to retain. For the present I will put it merely in this way: What would any six streets in Hoxton or Whitechapel give if they could elect (however indirectly) the policeman who should stand at the street corner?
CAPONE’S PAL
I HAVE sometimes shocked the conventions of our time by defending Private Property; and pointing out that Private Property has really been destroyed by Private Enterprise. In connection with this paradox, that our common conscience does really disapprove of a thief, I came upon a very curious case the other day; an actual incident which I will leave to speak for itself. It seemed to me to combine amusement with instruction.
I had wandered out of a famous Spanish port and found myself in a sort of seaside suburb. I could not speak the language; but Latins are so intelligent that they do without language. I turned, as I had done twenty times, into a little cafe, which was empty, except for a sturdy man on a stool, with his broad back to me; and he jumped down with a kind of alertness which is neither Spanish nor English. He was evidently the proprietor, and he spoke English fluently, but with a blended accent I could not define; till I realized that he was not a Spaniard speaking English, but a Spaniard speaking American. Some accident of talk led me to admit that I followed the low trade of literature; whereupon he leapt into new life and proclaimed that he also had written a book. He showed me the book. It seemed to me on a hasty glance, rather a good book, written with spirit and humour; but it was simply his own memoirs as a gunman and a gangster under Al Capone. It was a perfectly honest record of dishonesty; and described robbing and racketeering without any of the cant that excuses capitalism. Still, there was something warming to a melodramatic mind in being alone with a gunman. He was dark and brooding and suddenly broke off to say, “I shan’t write another book.”
“No,” I said applauding warmly, “keeping a bar is much better than writing a book. Many an Englishman has wished he kept a pub instead of keeping a publisher.”
And at this he was transfigured into tremendous and vibrant vitality. He shouted till the tavern shook with the crimes of his publisher. He said that his publisher had cheated him at every turn. He said he had to rush round the world to see that all his publishers and translators were not doing him out of his well-earned money. I think it quite likely that they were. I also have no illusions about publishing or other phases of modern plutocracy. But I thought it was faintly ironical. I reminded him of Byron’s saying that Barrabas was a publisher.
“In short,” I said firmly, “it was sheer robbery.”
“Sure,” he said with explosive emphasis; and we parted excellent friends. “It was just Robbery!”
ON LOSING ONE’S HEAD
WHEN I was a little boy I had an imagination, though this has long been washed out of me by the wordy abstractions of politics and journalism. For imagination, real imagination, is never a vague thing of vistas. Real imagination is always materialistic; for imagination consists of images, generally graven images. There is a mad literalism about imagination; and when I had it I turned everything that any one mentioned into a concrete body and a staring shape. Thus, I would hear grown-up people using ordinary proverbs and figures of speech; pale, worn-out proverbs, battered and colourless figures of speech. But every one of these phrases sprang out for me as fierce and vivid as a motto written in fireworks. For some reason I had a particularly graphic visual concept in the case of nautical metaphors. Thus, when I heard that my uncle on a sea voyage “had got his sea legs” I pictured the most horrible bodily transformations in my uncle. Had my uncle now got four legs? Or had it been necessary for his two original and (to my eye) unobjectionable legs to be amputated by the ship’s doctor? Did the new legs arrive as a sort of extra luggage, or did they loathsomely grow upon him, like hair or fungoids, with all the awful unnaturalness of Nature? I pictured my uncle’s sea legs as two green and glittering members, covered with scales like fishes, and bearing some resemblance to the two fish tails with which exuberant Renaissance artists sometimes provided Tritons and mermaids. Again when I heard (in some seafaring connection) that “the Captain kept his weather eye open,” I assumed with faultless infantile logic that he kept the other one quite shut. And in some dreams I rather pictured the Captain’s weather eye as being some separate and eccentric kind of eye, like that of a Cyclops; an eye of blue sky or lightning that opened suddenly in his hat or his coat-tails and blazed through black fantastic tempests; a strange star of the storm.
But there were many cases, even among more terrestrial and commonplace metaphors, where the material metaphor photographed itself on my fancy. One of them was the phrase about a man “Losing his heart.” A man, considered as a material envelope, seemed so securely done up that how the heart could get out of the body was a problem analogous to that of how the apple could get into the dumpling. Perhaps, I mused, the phrase about a man having his heart in his mouth might throw some light on the somewhat revolting phrase, which spoke of a man with his heart in his boots; where there was clearly no thoroughfare. From this my childish taste turned with a certain relief to the easier and more popular picture of a man losing his head; which seemed the sort of thing that might happen to anybody. Indeed, by this dream of symbolic decapitation I was much haunted in infancy and am not infrequently inspired and comforted even to this day. Whatever other metaphors may mean, this metaphor of the lost head has some primary and poetic meaning; and I have written many bad poems, bad fairy tales, and bad apologues in my industrious attempt to find it out and declare it. The connection between the animal and intellectual meaning of it became close and even confused. I vaguely thought of Charles I as having lost his head equally in both senses; which is not perhaps wholly untrue. When I read of the miracle of St. Dennis, who carried his head in his hand, it seemed to me quite a soothing and graceful proceeding, like a gentleman carrying his hat in his hand. St. Dennis did not lose his head anyhow; he carried it in his hand so as not to lose it; as ladies do their ridiculous handbags.
Indeed, this drifting and dancing dream of decapitation, in which kings and saints figured with gothic fantasticality, had a kind of allegory in the core of it. The separation of body and head is a sort of symbol of that separation of body and soul which is made by all the heresies and the sophistries, which are the nightmares of the mind. The mere materialist is a body that has lost its head; the mere spiritualist is a head that has mislaid its body. Under the same symbol can be found the old distinction between the sinner and the heretic about which theology has uttered many paradoxes, more profitable to study than some modern people fancy. For there is one kind of man who takes off his head and throws it in the gutter, who dethrones and forgets the reason that should be his ruler and witness; and the horrible headless body strides away over cities and sanctuaries, breaking them down and treading them into mire and blood. He is the criminal; but there is another figure equally sinister and strange. This man forgets his body, with all its instinctive honesties and recurrent sanities and laws of God; he leaves his body working in the fields like a slave; and the head goes away to think alone. The head, detached and dehumanized, thinks faster and faster like a clock gone mad; it is never heated by any generous blood, never softened by any healthy fatigue, never checked or warned by any of the terrible tocsins of instinct. The head thinks because it cannot do anything else; because it cannot feel or doubt or know. This man is the heretic; and in this way all the heresies were made. The anarchist goes off his head and the sophist goes off his body; I will not renew the old dispute about which is the worse amputation; but I should recommend the prudent reader to avoid both.
THE SPICE OF LIFE**
FORGIVE ME if I begin by enacting the part which I have played at so many dinner-parties, I mean the part of the skeleton at the feast. Pardon me if the first few words that reach you resemble a hollow voice from the tomb. For the truth is that the very title of this series makes me feel a little funereal. When I was asked to speak on the Spice of Life, I am sorry to say that the first thought that crossed my perverse and morbid mind was that spices, as spices, are quite as much associated with death as with life. Corpses embalmed and preserved were always swathed amid spices; mummies also, I suppose. I am no Egyptologist to decide the point. But even if they were, you would hardly go sniffing round a mummy in the British Museum, drawing deep breaths and saying, “This is indeed the spice of life.” Egypt was almost a civilization organized as a funeral procession; it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the living lived to serve the dead. And yet I suppose that an actual Egyptian walking about alive, was in no hurry to be spiced. Or take a homelier scene nearer home. Suppose you are chased by a mad bull; we will not debate which animal enjoys more of the spice of life; but both at the moment will give unmistakable signs of life. But the quadruped must wait until he is killed and cut up into cold beef, before he can have the pride and privilege of being spiced beef. In short, I want you to remember first of all that there has been in history, not only the spice of life, but something else that may fairly be called the spice of death. And I mention it first because it is a sort of parable; and there are a good many things in the modern world that seem to me to be dead, not to say damned, and yet are considered very spicy.
I will not dwell on this morbid parallel. Heaven forbid that I should suggest that some ladies are rather like mummies walking about, with very beautiful faces painted on the mummy-cases: or that some young gentlemen going the pace exhibit all the culture and selective subtlety of mad bulls. I am concerned with a much more important question at the back of this one. It seems to me that a great many people, whom I am far from calling mummies or mad bulls, are at this moment paying rather too much attention to the spice of life, and rather too little attention to life. Do not misunderstand me. I am very fond of spiced beef and all the spices; I always dread that the Puritan reformers will suddenly forbid mustard and pepper as they did malt and hops; on the absurd ground that salt and mustard are as unnecessary as music. But while I resist the suggestion that we must eat beef without mustard, I do recognize that there is now a much deeper and more subtle danger that men may want to eat mustard without beef. I mean that they may lose their appetite; their appetite for beef and bread and cheese and the broad daylight of life; and depend entirely on spices and condiments. I have even been blamed for defending the spices of life against what was called the Simple Life. I have been blamed for making myself a champion of beer and skittles. Fortunately, if I was a champion of skittles, there was never any danger of my being a champion at skittles. But I have played ordinary games like skittles, always badly; but all healthy people will agree that you never enjoy a game till you enjoy being beaten at the game. I have even played golf in Scotland before Arthur Balfour brought it to England and it became a fashion and then a religion. I have been since inhibited by a difficulty in regarding a game as a religion, and the horrid secret of my failure is that I never could quite see the difference between cricket and golf, as I played them when I was a boy, and puss-in-the-corner and honey-pots as I played them when I was a child. Perhaps those nursery games are now forgotten; anyhow, I will not reveal what good games they were, lest they should become fashionable. If once they were taken seriously in that most serious world, the world of Sport, enormous results will follow. The shops will sell a special Slipper for Hunt-the-Slipper, or a caddy will follow the player with a bag full of fifteen different slippers. Honey-pots will mean money-pots; and there will be a ‘corner’ in puss-in-the-corner.
Anyhow, I have enjoyed like everybody else those sports and spices of life. But I am more and more convinced that neither in your special spices nor in mine, neither in honey-pots nor quart-pots, neither in mustard nor in music, nor in any other distraction from life, is the secret we are all seeking, the secret of enjoying life. I am perfectly certain that all our world will end in despair, unless there is some way of making the mind itself, the ordinary thought we have at ordinary times, more healthy and more happy than they seem to be just now, to judge by most modern novels and poems. You have to be happy in those quiet moments when you remember that you are alive; not in those noisy moments when you forget. Unless we can learn again to enjoy life, we shall not long enjoy the spices of life. I once read a French fairy-tale that expressed exactly what I mean. Never believe that French wit is shallow; it is the shining surface of French irony, which is unfathomable. It was about a pessimist poet who decided to drown himself; and as he went down to the river, he gave away his eyes to a blind man, his ears to a deaf man, his legs to a lame man, and so on, up to the moment when the reader was waiting for the splash of his suicide; but the author wrote that this senseless trunk settled itself on the shore and began to experience the joy of living: la joie de vivre. The joy of being alive. You have to go deep, and perhaps to grow old, to know how true that story is.
If I were to ask myself where and when I have been happiest, I could of course give the obvious answers, as true of me as of everybody else; at some dance or feast of the romantic time of life; at some juvenile triumph of debate; at some sight of beautiful things in strange lands. But it is much more important to remember that I have been intensely and imaginatively happy in the queerest because the quietest places. I have been filled with life from within in a cold waiting-room in a deserted railway junction. I have been completely alive sitting on an iron seat under an ugly lamp-post at a third-rate watering place. In short, I have experienced the mere excitement of existence in places that would commonly be called as dull as ditch-water. And by the way, is ditch-water dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun. Even that proverbial phrase will prove that we cannot always trust what is proverbial, when it professes to describe what is prosaic. I doubt whether the fifteen gushing fountains to be found in your ornamental garden contain creatures so amusing as those the miscroscope reveals; like the profiles of politicians in caricature. And that is only one example out of a thousand, of the things in daily life we call dull that are not really so dull after all. And I am confident that there is no future for the modern world, unless it can understand that it has not merely to seek what is more and more exciting, but rather the yet more exciting business of discovering the excitement in things that are called dull.
What we have to teach the young man of the future, is how to enjoy himself. Until he can enjoy himself, he will grow more and more tired of enjoying everything else. What we have to teach him is to amuse himself. At this moment he is more and more dependent upon anything which he thinks will amuse him. And, to judge by the expression of his face, it does not amuse him very much. When we consider what he receives, it is indeed a most magnificent wonder and wealth and concentration of amusement. He can travel in a racing-car almost as quick as a cannon-ball; and still have his car fitted up with wireless from all the ends of the earth. He can get Vienna and Moscow; he can hear Cairo and Warsaw; and if he cannot see England, through which he happens to be travelling, that is after all a small matter. In a century, no doubt, his car will travel like a comet, and his wireless will hear the noises in the moon. But all this does not help him when the car stops; and he has to stand stamping about in a line, with nothing to think about. All this does not help him even when the wireless stops and he has to sit still in a silent car with nothing to talk about. If you consider what are the things poured into him, what are the things he receives, then indeed they are colossal cataracts of things, cosmic Niagaras that have never before poured into any human being are pouring into him. But if you consider what comes out of him, as a result of all this absorption, the result we have to record is rather serious. In the vast majority of cases, nothing. Not even conversation, as it used to be. He does not conduct long arguments, as young men did when I was young. The first and startling effect of all this noise is silence. Second, when he does have the itch to write or say something, it is always an itch in the sense of an irritation.
Everything has its better and baser form; and there is irritation and irritation. There is a great deal of difference between the irritation of Aldous Huxley and the irritation of some nasty little degenerate in a novel by Aldous Huxley. But honestly I do not think I am unfair to the whole trend of the time, if I say that it is intellectually irritated; and therefore without that sort of rich repose in the mind which I mean, when I say that a man when he is alone can be happy because he is alive. For instance, a man of genius of the same generation, for whom I have a very special admiration, is Mr. T. S. Eliot. But nobody will deny that there was a sense in which, originally, even his inspiration was irritation. He began with pure pessimism; he has since found much finer and more subtle things; but I hardly think he has found repose. And it is just here that I will have the effrontery to distinguish between his generation and mine. It used to be thought impudent for a boy to criticize an old gentleman, it now requires far more sublime impudence for an older man to criticize a younger. Yet I will defend my own idea of the spiritual spice of life against even the spirituality that finds this ordinary life entirely without spice. I know very well that Mr. Eliot described the desolation he found more than the desolation he felt. But I think that ‘The Waste Land’ was at least a world in which he had wandered. And as I am describing the recent world, I may as well describe it as he has described it, in ‘The Hollow Men’—though nobody would describe him as a hollow man. This is the impression of many impressions.
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
Now forgive me if I say, in my old-world fashion, that I’m damned if I ever felt like that. I recognize the great realities Mr. Eliot has revealed; but I do not admit that this is the deepest reality. I am ready to admit that our generation made too much of romance and comfort, but even when I was uncomfortable I was more comfortable than that. I was more comfortable on the iron seat. I was more happy in the cold waiting-room. I knew the world was perishable and would end, but I did not think it would end with a whimper, but if anything with a trump of doom. It is doubtless a grotesque spectacle that the great-grandfathers should still be dancing with indecent gaiety, when the young are so grave and sad; but in this matter of the spice of life, I will defend the spiritual appetite of my own age. I will even be so indecently frivolous as to break into song, and say to the young pessimists:
Some sneer; some snigger; some simper; In the youth where we laughed and sang, And they may end with a whimper But we will end with a bang.
ON FRAGMENTS
As I have said before I am a believer in staring blankly at things; if you do it something always happens. For instance, I am staring blankly at this sheet of paper and I firmly believe that something more or less intelligible will happen soon. Men stared at the blank blue sky and invented a million mythologies. Staring stupidly at live people is more dangerous; but even this has its fascination; and if you ever see your companion’s face turned towards you with the rounded and complete expression of a congenital idiot, you may be certain again that he is nearer at that moment than at any other to knowing what you really are; which I fancy is the last thing that you desire. When we cast ‘an intelligent look’ (as they say in books) at a thing, it only means that we stamp our own significance upon it. When we look wisely at a post we see what we mean by a post. But when we look stupidly at a post we see what a post means.
In such a trance of divine imbecility I remember once staring at the paving-stones under my feet, until I went off into a sort of dream of paving-stones. They passed perpetually under my feet like flat and silent waves of stones, and all the time I was asking myself what they were. Street after street I passed, looking at the ground like a cow. And then it suddenly seemed to me that they were all gravestones; the gravestones of innumerable and utterly forgotten men. For under every one of them, almost certainly, there was human dust. I seemed to see fantastic epitaphs on them, commemorating the deeds of heroes who are too old and too great to be remembered. There, for instance, was the man who found fire and the man who made the first wheel; men too necessary to be ever named. There were the dim poets who gave names to the flowers, and have utterly lost their own.
And among those imaginary benefactors in all ages I seemed to see one class especially predominant. I mean the people who in the dim beginning of time united one thing artificially, but permanently, with another. What primeval priest, for instance, married bread and cheese? Who was the wild visionary (of later times) who, after ransacking all the forests, and counting all the fruits of the earth, discovered that almonds and raisins had been looking for each other since the world began? Who, above all, discovered such a thing as the happy marriage between music and literature? The men who are least known from the past are certainly the men who made this combination. And the men who are best known at the present day are certainly those who are tearing such combinations in pieces.
This is the worst element in our anarchic world of today. The whole is one vast system of separation—an enormous philosophical Divorce Court. The theory of art for art’s sake, for instance, as applied to painting, was a proposal to separate a picture from the subject of the picture. Sentiment would be better without art, art would be better without sentiment. In other words, a picture would be a better picture if it were not a picture of anything. And a subject would be all the better subject if you did not paint it. Such moderns easily might, I think some moderns really have, applied the same principle to that ancient combination called a song. A very modern poet might easily say that the words would convey their own natural rhythms much better without a tune. A very modern musician might easily say that the only perfectly musical songs would be songs without words. No one has yet had the star-defying audacity to hint at a separation between bread and cheese. But we must be prepared to have it said before long by some profligate aesthete that bread would be more breadish without cheese, and that cheese would be more exquisitely and penetratingly cheesy without bread. We must be prepared, I say, for a perpetual tendency towards such cleavages; and we must be prepared to answer them by insisting on the immemorial right of mankind to perpetuate such alliances. Man has from the beginning joined spoken words to an air, and the two have grown old and wise together. Those whom man hath joined let no man sunder.
This endless process of separation of everything from everything else has a good example, for instance, in the case of religion. Religion, a human and historic religion, like Christianity or Buddhism or some great periods of Paganism was, as a matter of fact, a combination of all the important parts of life. Every one of the main human interests was in old times made a part of the creed. Every one of those human interests is now put apart by itself, as if it were a monomania like collecting stamps. A religion, as understood by humanity in the past, always consisted at least of the following elements. First, of a theory of ultimate truth and of the nature of the universe. That is now put by itself and called Metaphysics. Second, of a groping communication with some being other than man. This is now put by itself and called Psychical Research. Third, of a strict rule of behaviour, with many irritating vetoes. This is now put by itself and called Ethics. Fourth, of a certain flamboyant tendency to break out into colours and symbols, to do wild and beautiful things with flowers or with garments or with fire. This is now put by itself and called Art. Fifth, of a tendency to feel that matter and locality can be sacred, that certain soils or features of the landscape can be a part of the peace of the soul. This is now put by itself and called Patriotism. And the typically modern men are mainly proud of having thus torn up the original unity of the religious idea. Ethics for ethics’ sake, and art for art’s sake are like the tatters of what was once the seamless robe. They have parted his garments among them, and for his vesture they have cast lots.
THE SPICE OF LIFE
by
G. K. Chesterton
On the Essay An extract from the last paragraph of an introductory essay to Essays of the Year 1931-32. Published by The Argonaut Press, 1932
ESSAYS ON LITERATURE IN GENERAL
Sentimental Literature The Speaker, July 27,1901
How to Write a Detective G. K’s Weekly, October 17,
Story
Humour Encyclopaedia Britannica. Written May 1928
Fiction as Food Composite essay. I “Fiction as Food” from The Lending Library and Book Borrower’s Record, Nov., 1934.
II “Novel-Reading”,
T. P’s Weekly, April 7, 1911
The Soul in Every Legend New Witness, July 15, 1921
ON PARTICULAR BOOKS AND WRITERS
The Macbeths Date unknown. First published
John o’ London’s Weekly, Jan. 5 1951
The Tragedy of King Lear Introduction to an illustrated edition of King Lear published by David Magee, San Francisco, 1950— Illustrated by Yunge
The Everlasting Nights Daily News, November 7, 1901
Aesop’s Fables Introduction to a limited edition of Aesop’s Fables published by William Heinemann, London and Doubleday Page & Co., New York, 1912. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham
Both Sides of the Looking—The Listener, November 29. 1933
Glass
And So to Bed G. K’s Weekly, January 23, 1936
As Large as Life in Dickens Daily News, February 8. 1902
Disputes on Dickens The Academy. Date unknown.
Charlotte Bronte as a Contributed to a Centenary
Romantic Memorial Volume prepared by the Bronte Society. Published by T. Fisher Unwin, 1917
THOUGHT AND BELIEF
Anti-Religious Thought in Contributed to An Outline of the Eighteenth Century Christianity; the Story of our Civilization. Vol. IV. Christianity and Modern Thought, 1926. The Waverley Book Co., London
The Camp and the New Witness, September 22,
The Religious Aspect of Signed essay. Date and origin
Westminster Abbey unknown
The Religious Aim of The Torchbearer, 1925 Education
The Philosophy of Islands The Venture Annual, 1903
AT HOME AND ABROAD
On Holidays New Witness, May 21, 1914
The Peasant Daily News, July 8, 1911
The Lost Railway Station New Witness, October 24, 1919
Bethlehem and the Great New Witness, December 8, 1922
Cities
The Sacredness of Sites Illustrated London News, January 11, 1930
Scipio and the Children G. K’s Weekly, May 30, 1935
The Real Issue G. K’s Weekly, June 5, 1926
THE SPICE OF LIFE
The Comic Constable Daily News, April 2, 1910
Capone’s Pal New York American, July 12, 1935
On Losing One’s Head The Odd Volume Annual, 1910
The Spice of Life The Listener, March 18, 1936
On Fragments Daily News, March 31, 1906
** This is the text of a broadcast talk given by G. K. Chesterton for the British Broadcasting Corporation in their series THE SPICE OF LIFE.
Part Five: The Spice of Life
The Comic Constable
Capone’s Pal
On Losing One’s Head
The Spice of Life
On Fragments
Sources
THE ESSAY by G. K. Chesterton.
THE ESSAY is the only literary form which confesses, in its very name, that the rash act known as writing is really a leap in the dark. When men try to write a tragedy, they do not call the tragedy a try-on. Those who have toiled through the twelve books of an epic, writing it with their own hands, have seldom pretended that they have merely tossed off an epic as an experiment. But an essay, by its very name as well as its very nature, really is a try-on and really is an experiment. A man does not really write an essay. He does really essay to write an essay. One result is that, while there are many famous essays, there is fortunately no model essay. The perfect essay has never been written, for the simple reason that the essay has never really been written. Men have tried to write something, to find out what it was supposed to be. In this respect the essay is a typically modern product and is full of the future and the praise of experiment and adventure. In itself it remains somewhat elusive, and I will own that I am haunted with a faint suspicion that the essay will probably become rather more cogent and dogmatic, merely because of the deep and deadly divisions which ethical and economic problems may force upon us. But let us hope there will always be a place for the essay that is really an essay. St. Thomas Aquinas, with his usual common sense, said that neither the active nor the contemplative life could be lived without relaxation, in the form of jokes and games. The drama or the epic might be called the active life of literature; the sonnet or the ode the contemplative life. The essay is the joke.
Extract from introductory essay by G. K. Chesterton to Essays of the Year. See pp. 173-5 for all sources.
Parte quinta: Il sale della vita
Il poliziotto comico
L’amico di Capone
Sul perdere la testa
Il sale della vita
Sui frammenti
Fonti
Il SAGGIO di G. K. Chesterton.
Il SAGGIO è l’unica forma letteraria che confessa, nel suo stesso nome, che l’atto avventato noto come scrivere è davvero un salto nel buio. Quando gli uomini tentano di scrivere una tragedia, non chiamano la tragedia una prova. Coloro che hanno faticato attraverso i dodici libri di un poema epico, scrivendolo di propria mano, di rado hanno preteso di aver buttato giù un poema epico come esperimento. Ma un saggio, tanto per il suo stesso nome quanto per la sua stessa natura, è davvero una prova ed è davvero un esperimento. Un uomo non scrive davvero un saggio. Egli davvero saggia di scrivere un saggio. Un risultato è che, mentre vi sono molti saggi famosi, non v’è per fortuna alcun saggio modello. Il saggio perfetto non è mai stato scritto, per la semplice ragione che il saggio non è mai stato davvero scritto. Gli uomini hanno tentato di scrivere qualcosa, per scoprire che cosa dovesse essere. Sotto questo aspetto il saggio è un prodotto tipicamente moderno ed è pieno dell’avvenire e della lode dell’esperimento e dell’avventura. In sé rimane alquanto sfuggente, e confesserò di essere assillato dal debole sospetto che il saggio diverrà probabilmente più stringente e dogmatico, soltanto a causa delle profonde e mortali divisioni che i problemi etici ed economici potranno imporci. Ma speriamo che vi sarà sempre un posto per il saggio che è davvero un saggio. San Tommaso d’Aquino, col suo consueto buon senso, disse che né la vita attiva né quella contemplativa possono viversi senza svago, sotto forma di scherzi e giochi. Il dramma o il poema epico si potrebbero dire la vita attiva della letteratura; il sonetto o l’ode la vita contemplativa. Il saggio è lo scherzo.
Estratto dal saggio introduttivo di G. K. Chesterton a Essays of the Year. Vedi pp. 173-5 per tutte le fonti.
PART ONE: LITERATURE IN GENERAL
SENTIMENTAL LITERATURE
WE SHALL never attain to a serious and complete school of criticism so long as the word ‘sentimental’ is regarded as a term of depreciation. That ‘passionate’ should be a complimentary form and ‘sentimental’ a hostile one is as utterly unmeaning and ridiculous as it would be if ‘blue’ were complimentary and ‘green’ hostile. The difference between passion and sentiment is not, as is so often assumed, a difference in sincerity or wholesomeness or reality of feeling. It is a difference between two ways of looking at the same unquestionable facts of life. True sentiment consists in taking the central emotions of life not as passion takes them, personally, but impersonally, with a certain light and open confession of them as things common to us all. Passion is always a secret; it cannot be confessed; it is always a discovery; it cannot be shared. But sentiment stands for that frame of mind in which all men admit, with a half-humorous and half magnanimous weakness, that they all possess the same secret, and have all made the same discovery. Romeo and Juliet, for example, is passionate. Love’s Labour’s Lost is sentimental. No man, perhaps, was more sentimental than Thackeray; a certain kind of cynicism is akin to sentiment in that it treats the emotions openly and lightly. To the man of passion, love and the world are new; to the man of sentiment they are infinitely old.
It is absolutely necessary to have some such clear idea as this in our heads before we can do justice to the immense flood of sentimentalism which is one of the heaviest items in the actual output of popular literature. If sentimental literature is to be condemned it must emphatically not be because it is sentimental, it must be because it is not literature. To complain that such literature is sultry and relaxing, that it melts the character for a time into mere receptivity, that it has scarcely more practical nourishment in it than the sugar off a wedding-cake—to say all this is to complain that Othello is tragic or that the Mikado degenerates into frivolity. Sentimentality ought not to be anything but a passing mood; people who are sentimental day and night are among the most atrocious of the enemies of society. Dealing with them is like seeing an interminable number of poetical sunsets going on in the early morning. If sentimental literature is a curse, it is not so much because it is read widely, as because it is read exclusively.
There is a certain class of human feelings which must be indulged, but which must not be trusted; to deny them is to become a prig, but to confide in them is to cease to be a man. There has, for example, arisen of late years in literature and philosophy that craving for the strong man which is the mark of weakness. To jeer at the philosophy of force and supremacy would be abominable, it would be like jeering at biliousness or toothache. One of the most brilliant men of the nineteenth century was the philosopher of force and supremacy, Nietzsche, and he died in a madhouse. There have been many things, friendly and hostile, said about Nietzsche’s philosophy, but few so far have pointed out the basic fact that it is sentimental. It yields utterly to one of the oldest, most generous, and most excusable of the weaknesses of humanity, the hunger for the strong man. If any of Nietzsche’s followers wish to find the fullest and heartiest acceptance of their master’s doctrines, the most unrestrained prostration before masculine pride and violence, they will always find it in the novelettes. In these slight and periodical forms of sentimental fiction we find pre-eminently developed the tendency to give to the hero that kind of humour which dishonours the giver. Just as nations crown their despots in their periods of weakness, so human nature in its periods of weakness craves for despots, more than it ever craved for liberty. It is a foolish feeling, and, perhaps an immoral one, but it has one quality which may slightly interest us, it is absolutely universal: nor are the most advanced or intellectual of mankind in this respect one scrap less sentimental than the rest.
Indeed, there are, perhaps no circles in which women are so sentimental and subservient as in unconventional circles. The tendency which leads the popular novelette to deify mere arrogance and possession is emphatically one of those kindly sins which must be repudiated without being despised. It is Literary Imperialism, and it is as old as the fear of life, which is older and much wiser than the fear of death. To the same class as this idolatry of bone or brain belongs the idolatry of title or class or calling, which is exhibited in sentimental literature. It is snobbish, and it is a snobbishness which is vital as the blood, and seems almost as old as the stars. It is vulgar, but this kind of vulgarity at least fulfils its name, and is indeed common. The problem of sentimental literature is the problem of whether there must not be somewhere an outlet for these follies which one would call pardonable if they did not seem too mighty and eternal to be pardoned. It is the problem whether one must not expect that people will be sentimental if they are neither old enough nor wise enough to be passionate.
This much, then, can be said about the vices of popular sentimentalism: that at least they are old and wholesome vices. Sentimentality, which it is fashionable to call morbid, is of all things most natural and healthy; it is the very extravagance of youthful health. Whatever may be said against the novelettes and serials which foster the profound sentimentalism of the man in the street, there is no count against them which bears any resemblance to the heavy responsibility of the polished and cynical fiction fashionable among the educated class. It does not bring into the world new sins or sinister levities or passions at once savage and artificial. The novelette may basely grovel before strength, but at least it does not basely grovel before weakness. It may speak openly and without reticence of emotions that are sacred and should be kept in the heart, but at least it does not speak openly and without reticence of emotions that are despicable and should be spewed out of the mouth. Its snobbery and autocracy are kindlier than many forms of emancipation; it is at least human even where it fails to be humane.
PARTE PRIMA: LETTERATURA IN GENERALE
LETTERATURA SENTIMENTALE
NON GIUNGEREMO mai a una scuola critica seria e compiuta finché la parola «sentimentale» sarà considerata un termine di svalutazione. Che «appassionato» debba essere una forma di elogio e «sentimentale» una di ostilità è tanto assolutamente privo di senso e ridicolo quanto lo sarebbe se «azzurro» fosse elogiativo e «verde» ostile. La differenza tra passione e sentimento non è, come tanto spesso si suppone, una differenza di sincerità, di salubrità o di realtà del sentire. È una differenza tra due modi di guardare gli stessi indiscutibili fatti della vita. Il vero sentimento consiste nel prendere le emozioni centrali della vita non come le prende la passione, personalmente, ma impersonalmente, con una certa leggera e aperta confessione di esse come cose comuni a tutti noi. La passione è sempre un segreto; non può essere confessata; è sempre una scoperta; non può essere condivisa. Ma il sentimento sta per quello stato d’animo in cui tutti gli uomini ammettono, con una debolezza per metà umoristica e per metà magnanima, di possedere tutti lo stesso segreto e di aver fatto tutti la stessa scoperta. Romeo e Giulietta, per esempio, è appassionato. Pene d’amor perdute è sentimentale. Nessun uomo, forse, fu più sentimentale di Thackeray; un certo tipo di cinismo è affine al sentimento in quanto tratta le emozioni apertamente e con leggerezza. Per l’uomo di passione, l’amore e il mondo sono nuovi; per l’uomo di sentimento sono infinitamente antichi.
È assolutamente necessario avere in testa qualche idea chiara come questa prima di poter rendere giustizia all’immensa fiumana di sentimentalismo che è una delle voci più pesanti nell’effettiva produzione della letteratura popolare. Se la letteratura sentimentale deve essere condannata, non lo si deve enfaticamente fare perché è sentimentale, lo si deve fare perché non è letteratura. Lamentarsi che una tale letteratura sia afosa e snervante, che sciolga il carattere per un certo tempo in mera ricettività, che abbia in sé a malapena più nutrimento pratico dello zucchero di una torta nuziale—dire tutto questo è lamentarsi che l’Otello sia tragico o che il Mikado degeneri nella frivolezza. La sentimentalità non dovrebbe essere altro che uno stato d’animo passeggero; le persone che sono sentimentali giorno e notte sono tra i più atroci nemici della società. Averci a che fare è come vedere un numero interminabile di poetici tramonti che si svolgono di primo mattino. Se la letteratura sentimentale è una maledizione, non è tanto perché viene letta largamente, quanto perché viene letta esclusivamente.
Vi è una certa classe di sentimenti umani ai quali ci si deve concedere, ma dei quali non ci si deve fidare; negarli è diventare un pedante, ma confidare in essi è cessare di essere un uomo. È sorto, per esempio, negli ultimi anni nella letteratura e nella filosofia quel bramare l’uomo forte che è il segno della debolezza. Schernire la filosofia della forza e della supremazia sarebbe abominevole, sarebbe come schernire la bile o il mal di denti. Uno degli uomini più brillanti dell’Ottocento fu il filosofo della forza e della supremazia, Nietzsche, ed egli morì in un manicomio. Molte cose sono state dette, amiche e ostili, sulla filosofia di Nietzsche, ma poche finora hanno messo in luce il fatto fondamentale che essa è sentimentale. Cede totalmente a una delle più antiche, più generose e più scusabili debolezze dell’umanità, la fame dell’uomo forte. Se qualcuno dei seguaci di Nietzsche desidera trovare l’accettazione più piena e più cordiale delle dottrine del loro maestro, la più sfrenata prostrazione dinanzi all’orgoglio e alla violenza maschili, la troverà sempre nei romanzetti d’appendice. In queste esili e periodiche forme di narrativa sentimentale troviamo eminentemente sviluppata la tendenza a dare all’eroe quel genere di umore che disonora chi lo dà. Proprio come le nazioni incoronano i loro despoti nei loro periodi di debolezza, così la natura umana nei suoi periodi di debolezza brama despoti più di quanto abbia mai bramato la libertà. È un sentimento sciocco, e forse immorale, ma ha una qualità che può interessarci un poco: è assolutamente universale; né i più avanzati o intellettuali del genere umano sono, sotto questo aspetto, un briciolo meno sentimentali del resto.
Anzi, non vi sono forse circoli in cui le donne siano tanto sentimentali e servili quanto nei circoli anticonvenzionali. La tendenza che porta il romanzetto popolare a deificare la mera arroganza e il mero possesso è enfaticamente uno di quei benevoli peccati che vanno ripudiati senza essere disprezzati. È Imperialismo Letterario, ed è antico quanto la paura della vita, che è più antica e assai più saggia della paura della morte. Alla stessa classe di questa idolatria dell’osso o del cervello appartiene l’idolatria del titolo o della classe o della professione, che si manifesta nella letteratura sentimentale. È snobismo, ed è uno snobismo che è vitale quanto il sangue e sembra quasi antico quanto le stelle. È volgare, ma questo tipo di volgarità almeno adempie al proprio nome, ed è invero comune. Il problema della letteratura sentimentale è il problema se non debba esservi da qualche parte uno sfogo per queste follie che si direbbero perdonabili se non sembrassero troppo possenti ed eterne per essere perdonate. È il problema se non ci si debba aspettare che le persone siano sentimentali se non sono abbastanza vecchie né abbastanza sagge per essere appassionate.
Questo, dunque, si può dire dei vizi del sentimentalismo popolare: che almeno sono vizi antichi e sani. La sentimentalità, che è di moda chiamare morbosa, è di tutte le cose la più naturale e sana; è la vera stravaganza della salute giovanile. Qualunque cosa si possa dire contro i romanzetti e i romanzi a puntate che alimentano il profondo sentimentalismo dell’uomo della strada, non vi è capo d’accusa contro di essi che abbia una qualche somiglianza con la pesante responsabilità della narrativa forbita e cinica di moda tra la classe colta. Essa non introduce nel mondo nuovi peccati o sinistre leggerezze o passioni al tempo stesso selvagge e artificiali. Il romanzetto potrà bassamente strisciare dinanzi alla forza, ma almeno non striscia bassamente dinanzi alla debolezza. Potrà parlare apertamente e senza reticenza di emozioni che sono sacre e dovrebbero essere custodite nel cuore, ma almeno non parla apertamente e senza reticenza di emozioni che sono spregevoli e dovrebbero essere sputate fuori dalla bocca. Il suo snobismo e la sua autocrazia sono più benevoli di molte forme di emancipazione; esso è almeno umano anche là dove non riesce a essere umanitario.
And of its merits there is surely something to be said: that the tired sempstress or the overworked shopgirl should only have as it were to open a door and find herself in a new room in which new and outrageously elegant figures are performing new and outrageously dignified actions is a gift that outweighs many stories of magic. That the actions of the figures are singularly languid and inevitable, that the characters are endowed with a very simple stock of virtues and vices, that the morality of the story is never for a moment mingled or perplexed, that over the whole scene broods the presence of an utterly fatalistic optimism, all this only makes the matter richer and quieter for tired intellects and tortured nerves.
That these dreams sometimes lead the dreamers to exaggerate and blunder, to overestimate or to underestimate life, may well be. The same troubles arose in connection with Christianity, that stupendous triumph of sentiment. Christianity also has led the weak, who were its care, to expect both too much and too little of life. But the supreme fact remains, that we can never estimate the value of a dream; that we can never know whether the ascetics, who drugged themselves with visions and scourged themselves with rods, were not the happiest of all the children of men.
HOW TO WRITE A DETECTIVE STORY
From G. K.’s Weekly, October 17, 1925
Let it be understood that I write this article as one wholly conscious that he has failed to write a detective story. But I have failed a good many times. My authority is therefore practical and scientific, like that of some great statesman or social thinker dealing with Unemployment or the Housing Problem. I do not pretend that I have achieved the ideal that I set up here for the young student; I am, if you will, rather the awful example for him to avoid. None the less I believe that there are ideals of detective writings, as of everything else worth doing; and I wonder they are not more often set out in all that popular didactic literature which teaches us how to do so many things so much less worth doing; as, for instance, how to succeed. Indeed, I wonder very much that the title at the top of this article does not stare at us from every bookstall. Pamphlets are published teaching people all sorts of things that cannot possibly be learnt, such as personality, popularity, poetry, and charm. Even those parts of literature and journalism that most obviously cannot be learnt are assiduously taught. But here is a piece of plain straightforward literary craftsmanship, constructive rather than creative, which could to some limited extent be taught and even, in very lucky instances, learnt. Sooner or later I suppose the want will be supplied, in that commercial system in which supply immediately answers to demand, and in which everybody seems to be thoroughly dissatisfied and unable to get anything he wants. Sooner or later, I suppose, there will not only be text-books teaching criminal investigators, but text-books teaching criminals. It will be but a slight change from the present tone of financial ethics, and when the shrewd and vigorous business mind has broken away from the last lingering influence of dogmas invented by priests, journalism and advertisement will show the same indifference to the taboos of today as does today to the taboos of the Middle Ages. Burglary will be explained like usury, and there will be no more disguise about cutting throats than there is about cornering markets. The bookstalls will be brightened with titles like ‘Forgery in Fifteen Lessons,’ and ‘Why Endure Married Misery?’ with a popularization of poisoning fully as scientific as the popularization of Divorce and Birth-Control.
But, as we are so often reminded, we must not be in a hurry for the arrival of a happy humanity; and meanwhile, we seem to be quite as likely to get good advice about committing crimes as good advice about detecting them, or about describing how they could be detected. I imagine the explanation is that the crime, the detection, the description, and the description of the description, do all demand a certain slight element of thought, while succeeding and writing a book on success in no way necessitate this tiresome experience. Anyhow, I find in my own case that when I begin to think of the theory of detective stories, I do become what some would call theoretical. That is, I begin at the beginning, without any pep, snap, zip or other essential of the art of arresting the attention, without in any way disturbing or awakening the mind.
The first and fundamental principle is that the aim of a mystery story, as of every other story and every other mystery, is not darkness but light. The story is written for the moment when the reader does understand, not merely for the many preliminary moments when he does not understand. The misunderstanding is only meant as a dark outline of cloud to bring out the brightness of that instant of intelligibility; and most bad detective stories are bad because they fail upon this point. The writers have a strange notion that it is their business to baffle the reader; and that so long as they baffle him it does not matter if they disappoint him. But it is not only necessary to hide a secret, it is also necessary to have a secret; and to have a secret worth hiding. The climax must not be an anti-climax; it must not merely consist of leading the reader a dance and leaving him in a ditch. The climax must not be only the bursting of a bubble but rather the breaking of a dawn; only that the daybreak is accentuated by the dark. Any form of art, however trivial, refers back to some serious truths; and though we are dealing with nothing more momentous than a mob of Watsons, all watching with round eyes like owls, it is still permissible to insist that it is the people who sat in darkness who have seen a great light; and that the darkness is only valuable in making vivid a great light in the mind. It always struck me as an amusing coincidence that the best of the Sherlock Holmes stories bore, with a totally different application and significance, a title that might have been invented to express this primal illumination; the title of “Silver Blaze”.
E dei suoi meriti c’è di sicuro qualcosa da dire: che la stanca cucitrice o la commessa oberata di lavoro debba per così dire soltanto aprire una porta e ritrovarsi in una stanza nuova in cui figure nuove e oltraggiosamente eleganti compiono azioni nuove e oltraggiosamente dignitose è un dono che supera molte storie di magia. Che le azioni delle figure siano singolarmente languide e inevitabili, che i personaggi siano dotati di un repertorio assai semplice di virtù e vizi, che la morale della storia non sia mai per un istante mescolata o intricata, che sull’intera scena aleggi la presenza di un ottimismo del tutto fatalistico, tutto ciò non fa che rendere la faccenda più ricca e più quieta per gli intelletti stanchi e i nervi torturati.
Che questi sogni talvolta conducano i sognatori a esagerare e a sbagliare, a sopravvalutare o a sottovalutare la vita, può ben essere. Gli stessi guai sorsero in relazione al Cristianesimo, quel prodigioso trionfo del sentimento. Anche il Cristianesimo ha condotto i deboli, che erano la sua cura, ad aspettarsi dalla vita al tempo stesso troppo e troppo poco. Ma il fatto supremo rimane: che non possiamo mai stimare il valore di un sogno; che non possiamo mai sapere se gli asceti, che si drogavano di visioni e si flagellavano con le verghe, non fossero i più felici di tutti i figli degli uomini.
COME SCRIVERE UN RACCONTO POLIZIESCO
Da G. K.’s Weekly, 17 ottobre 1925
Sia inteso che scrivo questo articolo come uno pienamente consapevole di aver fallito nello scrivere un racconto poliziesco. Ma ho fallito parecchie volte. La mia autorità è dunque pratica e scientifica, come quella di qualche grande statista o pensatore sociale alle prese con la Disoccupazione o il Problema degli Alloggi. Non pretendo di aver conseguito l’ideale che qui propongo al giovane studioso; sono, se volete, piuttosto il terribile esempio da evitare. Ciò nondimeno credo che vi siano ideali della scrittura poliziesca, come di ogni altra cosa che valga la pena di fare; e mi meraviglia che non vengano esposti più spesso in tutta quella popolare letteratura didattica che ci insegna a fare tante cose che valgono assai meno la pena di essere fatte; come, per esempio, a riuscire nella vita. Anzi, mi meraviglia moltissimo che il titolo in cima a questo articolo non ci fissi da ogni bancarella. Si pubblicano opuscoli che insegnano alla gente ogni sorta di cose che non possono affatto essere apprese, come la personalità, la popolarità, la poesia e il fascino. Persino quelle parti della letteratura e del giornalismo che più evidentemente non possono essere apprese vengono insegnate assiduamente. Ma ecco un pezzo di semplice e schietto artigianato letterario, costruttivo più che creativo, che potrebbe in qualche misura limitata essere insegnato e persino, in casi molto fortunati, appreso. Prima o poi suppongo che la mancanza sarà colmata, in quel sistema commerciale in cui l’offerta risponde immediatamente alla domanda, e in cui ognuno sembra essere totalmente insoddisfatto e incapace di ottenere ciò che vuole. Prima o poi, suppongo, vi saranno non solo manuali che istruiscono gli investigatori criminali, ma manuali che istruiscono i criminali. Sarà un lieve mutamento rispetto all’attuale tono dell’etica finanziaria, e quando la scaltra e vigorosa mente d’affari si sarà liberata dall’ultima persistente influenza dei dogmi inventati dai preti, il giornalismo e la pubblicità mostreranno verso i tabù di oggi la stessa indifferenza che oggi mostra verso i tabù del Medioevo. Lo scasso sarà spiegato come l’usura, e non vi sarà più travestimento nel tagliare le gole di quanto ve ne sia nell’accaparrare i mercati. Le bancarelle saranno ravvivate da titoli come «La falsificazione in quindici lezioni» e «Perché sopportare l’infelicità coniugale?», con una divulgazione dell’avvelenamento tanto scientifica quanto la divulgazione del Divorzio e del Controllo delle Nascite.
Ma, come tanto spesso ci viene ricordato, non dobbiamo avere fretta per l’arrivo di un’umanità felice; e nel frattempo sembra che abbiamo altrettante probabilità di ricevere buoni consigli su come commettere i delitti quanti buoni consigli su come scoprirli, o su come descrivere in che modo potrebbero essere scoperti. Immagino che la spiegazione sia che il delitto, la scoperta, la descrizione e la descrizione della descrizione esigono tutti un certo lieve elemento di pensiero, mentre riuscire nella vita e scrivere un libro sul successo non necessitano in alcun modo di questa fastidiosa esperienza. Comunque sia, trovo nel mio caso che quando comincio a pensare alla teoria dei racconti polizieschi divento ciò che alcuni chiamerebbero teorico. Cioè comincio dal principio, senza brio, slancio, scatto o altro elemento essenziale dell’arte di catturare l’attenzione, senza in alcun modo turbare o destare la mente.
Il primo e fondamentale principio è che lo scopo di un racconto di mistero, come di ogni altro racconto e di ogni altro mistero, non è l’oscurità ma la luce. Il racconto è scritto per il momento in cui il lettore comprende davvero, non semplicemente per i molti momenti preliminari in cui non comprende. Il malinteso è inteso soltanto come un cupo contorno di nube per far risaltare la luminosità di quell’istante di intelligibilità; e la maggior parte dei cattivi racconti polizieschi è cattiva perché fallisce su questo punto. Gli scrittori hanno la strana idea che sia loro compito confondere il lettore; e che purché lo confondano non importa se lo deludono. Ma non è solo necessario nascondere un segreto, è anche necessario avere un segreto; e avere un segreto che valga la pena di nascondere. Il culmine non deve essere un anticulmine; non deve consistere semplicemente nel far fare al lettore una danza e nel piantarlo in un fosso. Il culmine non deve essere soltanto lo scoppio di una bolla ma piuttosto il rompere di un’alba; solo che il levar del giorno è accentuato dal buio. Ogni forma d’arte, per quanto banale, rimanda a qualche verità seria; e per quanto abbiamo a che fare con nulla di più importante di una folla di Watson, tutti che osservano con occhi tondi come gufi, è pur lecito insistere che sono le persone sedute nelle tenebre ad aver visto una grande luce; e che il buio è prezioso solo nel rendere vivida una grande luce nella mente. Mi ha sempre colpito come un’amena coincidenza che il migliore dei racconti di Sherlock Holmes recasse, con applicazione e significato del tutto diversi, un titolo che avrebbe potuto essere inventato per esprimere questa illuminazione primordiale; il titolo di «Silver Blaze».
The second great principle is that the soul of detective fiction is not complexity but simplicity. The secret may appear complex, but it must be simple; and in this also it is a symbol of higher mysteries. The writer is there to explain the mystery; but he ought not to be needed to explain the explanation. The explanation should explain itself; it should be something that can be hissed (by the villain, of course) in a few whispered words or shrieked preferably by the heroine before she swoons under the shock of the belated realization that two and two make four. Now some literary detectives make the solution more complicated than the mystery, and the crime more complicated than the solution.
Thirdly, it follows that so far as possible the fact or figure explaining everything should be a familiar fact or figure. The criminal should be in the foreground, not in the capacity of criminal, but in some other capacity which nevertheless gives him a natural right to be in the foreground. I will take as a convenient case the one I have already quoted; the story of Silver Blaze. Sherlock Holmes is as familiar as Shakespeare; so there is no injustice by this time in letting out the secret of one of the first of these famous tales. News is brought to Sherlock Holmes that a valuable race-horse has been stolen, and the trainer guarding him murdered by the thief. Various people, of course, are plausibly suspected of the theft and murder; and everybody concentrates on the serious police problem of who can have killed the trainer. The simple truth is that the horse killed him. Now I take that as a model because the truth is so very simple. The truth really is so very obvious.
At any rate, the point is that the horse is very obvious. The story is named after the horse; it is all about the horse; the horse is in the foreground all the time, but always in another capacity. As a thing of great value he remains for the reader the Favourite; it is only as a criminal that he is a dark horse. It is a story of theft in which the horse plays the part of the jewel until we forget that the jewel can also play the part of the weapon. That is one of the first rules I would suggest, if I had to make rules for this form of composition. Generally speaking, the agent should be a familiar figure in an unfamiliar function. The thing that we realize must be a thing that we recognize; that is it must be something previously known, and it ought to be something prominently displayed. Otherwise there is no surprise in mere novelty. It is useless for a thing to be unexpected if it was not worth expecting. But it should be prominent for one reason and responsible for another. A great part of the craft or trick of writing mystery stories consists in finding a convincing but misleading reason for the prominence of the criminal, over and above his legitimate business of committing the crime. Many mysteries fail merely by leaving him at loose ends in the story, with apparently nothing to do except to commit the crime. He is generally well off, or our just and equal law would probably have him arrested as a vagrant long before he was arrested as a murderer. We reach the stage of suspecting such a character by a very rapid if unconscious process of elimination. Generally we suspect him merely because he has not been suspected. The art of narrative consists in convincing the reader for a time, not only that the character might have come on the premises with no intention to commit a felony, but that the author has put him there with some intention that is not felonious. For the detective story is only a game; and in that game the reader is not really wrestling with the criminal but with the author.
What the writer has to remember, in this sort of game, is that the reader will not say, as he sometimes might of a serious or realistic study: “Why did the surveyor in green spectacles climb the tree to look into the lady doctor’s back garden?” He will insensibly and inevitably say, “Why did the author make the surveyor climb a tree, or introduce any surveyor at all?” The reader may admit that the town would in any case need a surveyor, without admitting that the tale would in any case need one. It is necessary to explain his presence in the tale (and the tree) not only by suggesting why the town council put him there, but why the author put him there. Over and above any little crimes he may intend to indulge in, in the inner chamber of the story, he must have already some other justification as a character in a story and not only as a mere miserable material person in real life. The instinct of the reader, playing hide-and-seek with the writer, who is his real enemy, is always to say with suspicion, “Yes, I know a surveyor might climb a tree; I am quite aware that there are trees and that there are surveyors, but what are you doing with them? Why did you make this particular surveyor climb this particular tree in this particular tale, you cunning and evil-minded man?”
This I should call the fourth principle to be remembered, as in the other cases, people probably will not realize that it is practical, because the principles on which it rests sound theoretical. It rests on the fact that in the classification of the arts, mysterious murders belong to the grand and joyful company of the things called jokes. The story is a fancy; an avowedly fictitious fiction. We may say if we like that it is a very artificial form of art. I should prefer to say that it is professedly a toy, a thing that children ‘pretend’ wish. From this it follows that the reader, who is a simple child and therefore very wide awake, is conscious not only of the toy but of the invisible playmate who is the maker of the toy, and the author of the trick. The innocent child is very sharp and not a little suspicious. And one of the first rules I repeat, for the maker of a tale that shall be a trick, is to remember that the masked murderer must have an artistic right to be on the scene and not merely a realistic right to be in the world. He must not only come to the house on business, but on the business of the story; it is not only a question of the motive of the visitor but of the motive of the author. The ideal mystery story is one in which he is such a character as the author would have created for his own sake, or for the sake of making the story move in other necessary matters, and then be found to be present there, not for the obvious and sufficient reason, but for a second and a secret one. I will add that for this reason, despite the sneers at ‘love-interest’ there is a good deal to be said for the tradition of sentiment and slower or more Victorian narration. Some may call it a bore, but it may succeed as a blind.
Il secondo grande principio è che l’anima della narrativa poliziesca non è la complessità ma la semplicità. Il segreto può apparire complesso, ma deve essere semplice; e anche in questo è un simbolo di misteri più alti. Lo scrittore è lì per spiegare il mistero; ma non dovrebbe essere necessario che spieghi la spiegazione. La spiegazione dovrebbe spiegarsi da sé; dovrebbe essere qualcosa che può essere sibilato (dal cattivo, s’intende) in poche parole sussurrate, o strillato preferibilmente dall’eroina prima che svenga sotto lo choc della tardiva presa di coscienza che due più due fa quattro. Ora, certi detective letterari rendono la soluzione più complicata del mistero, e il delitto più complicato della soluzione.
In terzo luogo, ne consegue che, per quanto possibile, il fatto o la figura che spiega ogni cosa dovrebbe essere un fatto o una figura familiare. Il criminale dovrebbe essere in primo piano, non nella veste di criminale, ma in qualche altra veste che gli dia nondimeno un diritto naturale a stare in primo piano. Prenderò come caso comodo quello che ho già citato; il racconto di Silver Blaze. Sherlock Holmes è familiare quanto Shakespeare; sicché a questo punto non vi è alcuna ingiustizia nel rivelare il segreto di uno dei primi di questi celebri racconti. A Sherlock Holmes viene portata la notizia che un prezioso cavallo da corsa è stato rubato, e l’addestratore che lo custodiva assassinato dal ladro. Varie persone, naturalmente, sono plausibilmente sospettate del furto e dell’omicidio; e tutti si concentrano sul serio problema poliziesco di chi possa aver ucciso l’addestratore. La semplice verità è che a ucciderlo fu il cavallo. Ora, prendo questo come modello perché la verità è così semplice. La verità è davvero così ovvia.
In ogni caso, il punto è che il cavallo è assai evidente. Il racconto prende il nome dal cavallo; parla tutto del cavallo; il cavallo è in primo piano per tutto il tempo, ma sempre in un’altra veste. Come cosa di gran valore rimane per il lettore il Favorito; è solo come criminale che è un cavallo oscuro. È una storia di furto in cui il cavallo recita la parte del gioiello finché dimentichiamo che il gioiello può anche recitare la parte dell’arma. Questa è una delle prime regole che suggerirei, se dovessi stabilire regole per questa forma di composizione. In generale, l’agente dovrebbe essere una figura familiare in una funzione non familiare. La cosa che comprendiamo deve essere una cosa che riconosciamo; cioè deve essere qualcosa di precedentemente noto, e dovrebbe essere qualcosa esibito in evidenza. Altrimenti non vi è sorpresa nella mera novità. È inutile che una cosa sia inaspettata se non valeva la pena di aspettarsela. Ma dovrebbe essere in evidenza per una ragione e responsabile per un’altra. Gran parte dell’arte o del trucco dello scrivere racconti di mistero consiste nel trovare una ragione convincente ma fuorviante per l’evidenza del criminale, al di là della sua legittima occupazione di commettere il delitto. Molti misteri falliscono semplicemente lasciandolo senza scopo nel racconto, apparentemente senza nulla da fare se non commettere il delitto. Egli è generalmente benestante, altrimenti la nostra giusta ed equanime legge lo avrebbe probabilmente fatto arrestare come vagabondo molto prima che venisse arrestato come assassino. Arriviamo a sospettare un tale personaggio mediante un processo di eliminazione molto rapido benché inconsapevole. In genere lo sospettiamo semplicemente perché non è stato sospettato. L’arte della narrazione consiste nel convincere il lettore per un certo tempo, non solo che il personaggio possa essersi recato sul luogo senza intenzione di commettere un reato, ma che l’autore ve l’abbia messo con qualche intenzione che non è criminosa. Poiché il racconto poliziesco è solo un gioco; e in quel gioco il lettore non si sta realmente misurando con il criminale ma con l’autore.
Ciò che lo scrittore deve ricordare, in questa sorta di gioco, è che il lettore non dirà, come talvolta potrebbe fare di uno studio serio o realistico: «Perché il geometra dagli occhiali verdi si arrampicò sull’albero per guardare nell’orto sul retro della dottoressa?». Egli, insensibilmente e inevitabilmente, dirà: «Perché l’autore fece arrampicare il geometra su un albero, o introdusse un geometra qualsiasi?». Il lettore può ammettere che la città in ogni caso avrebbe bisogno di un geometra, senza ammettere che il racconto in ogni caso ne avrebbe bisogno. È necessario spiegare la sua presenza nel racconto (e sull’albero) non solo suggerendo perché il consiglio comunale ve l’abbia collocato, ma perché ve l’abbia collocato l’autore. Al di là di qualsiasi piccolo delitto in cui possa intendere indulgere, nella camera interna del racconto, egli deve avere già qualche altra giustificazione come personaggio di una storia e non solo come una mera misera persona materiale nella vita reale. L’istinto del lettore, che gioca a nascondino con lo scrittore, il suo vero nemico, è sempre di dire con sospetto: «Sì, so che un geometra potrebbe arrampicarsi su un albero; sono ben consapevole che esistono alberi e che esistono geometri, ma che ci fai con loro? Perché hai fatto arrampicare proprio questo geometra su proprio quest’albero in proprio questo racconto, uomo astuto e malintenzionato?».
Questo lo chiamerei il quarto principio da ricordare, poiché, come negli altri casi, le persone probabilmente non si renderanno conto che è pratico, perché i principi su cui poggia suonano teorici. Poggia sul fatto che, nella classificazione delle arti, i misteriosi omicidi appartengono alla grande e gioiosa compagnia delle cose chiamate scherzi. Il racconto è una fantasia; una finzione dichiaratamente fittizia. Possiamo dire, se vogliamo, che è una forma d’arte assai artificiale. Preferirei dire che è dichiaratamente un giocattolo, una cosa che i bambini «fanno finta» di volere. Da ciò consegue che il lettore, il quale è un semplice bambino e perciò assai sveglio, è consapevole non solo del giocattolo ma dell’invisibile compagno di gioco che è il costruttore del giocattolo e l’autore del trucco. L’innocente bambino è molto acuto e non poco sospettoso. E una delle prime regole, lo ripeto, per il costruttore di un racconto che debba essere un trucco, è ricordare che l’assassino mascherato deve avere un diritto artistico a essere sulla scena e non semplicemente un diritto realistico a essere nel mondo. Non deve solo recarsi in casa per affari, ma per gli affari del racconto; non è solo questione del movente del visitatore ma del movente dell’autore. Il racconto di mistero ideale è quello in cui egli è un tale personaggio quale l’autore avrebbe creato per amor suo, o per amore di far muovere la storia in altre faccende necessarie, e poi lo si scopre presente lì non per la ragione ovvia e sufficiente, ma per una seconda e segreta. Aggiungerò che per questa ragione, malgrado gli sberleffi verso l’«interesse amoroso», c’è parecchio da dire a favore della tradizione del sentimento e di una narrazione più lenta o più vittoriana. Alcuni potranno chiamarla una noia, ma può riuscire come schermo.
Lastly the principle that the detective story like every literary form starts with an idea, and does not merely start out to find one, applies also to its more material mechanical detail. Where the story turns upon detection, it is still necessary that the writer should begin from the inside, though the detective approaches from the outside. Every good problem of this type originates in a positive notion, which is in itself a simple notion; some fact of daily life that the writer can remember and the reader can forget. But anyhow, a tale has to be founded on a truth; and though opium may be added to it, it must not merely be an opium dream.
HUMOUR
HUMOUR, in the modern use of the term, signifies a perception of the comic or incongruous of a special sort; generally distinguished from Wit, as being on the one side more subtle, or on the other side more vague. It is thus a term which not only refuses to be defined, but in a sense boasts of being indefinable; and it would commonly be regarded as a deficiency in humour to search for a definition of humour. The modern use of the term, however, is by no means the primary or necessary use of it; and it is one of the cases, rarer than is commonly supposed, in which derivation offers at least an approach to definition. Everybody knows that ‘Humor’, in the Latin sense of ‘moisture’ was applied here as part of the old physiological theory, by which the characters of men varied according to the proportions of certain different secretions in the human body; as, for instance, that the predominance of phlegm produced the phlegmatic humour. By the time of the full consolidation of the English language, it had thus become possible for Ben Jonson and others to use the word ‘humour’ rather in the sense of ‘the ruling passion’. With this there necessarily went an idea of exaggeration; and by the end of the process the character of a humorist was more or less identical with what we should call an eccentric. The next stages of the development, which are rather slow and subtle correspond to the various degrees in which the eccentric has become conscious of his eccentricity. England has always been especially rich in these eccentrics; and in England, where everything was less logical and more casual than in other countries, the eccentric long remained, as we should say, half unconsciously and half consciously humorous. The blend, and the beginnings of the modern meaning, may perhaps be dated at about the time of Walter Scott’s Waverley Novels; when Guy Mannering complains of Councillor Pleydell as ‘a crack-brained humorist’. For Pleydell is indeed laughed at for his little vanities or whims; but he himself joins in the laugh and sees the humour of his humour. Since then the word has come to be used more and more exclusively of conscious humour; and generally of a rather deep and delicate appreciation of the absurdities of others.
Nevertheless there clings to the word Humour, especially when balanced against the word Wit, a sort of tradition or atmosphere that belongs to the old eccentrics whose eccentricity was always wilful and not infrequently blind. The distinction is a fine one; but one of the elements remaining in this blend is a certain sense of being laughed at, as well as of laughing. It involves some confession of human weakness; whereas wit is rather the human intellect exerting its full strength, though perhaps upon a small point. Wit is reason on its judgment seat; and though the offenders may be touched lightly, the point is that the judge is not touched at all. But humour always has in it some idea of the humorist himself being at a disadvantage and caught in the entanglements and contradictions of human life. It is a grave error to underrate Wit as something trivial; for certain purposes of satire it can truly be the sword of the spirit, and the satirist bears not the sword in vain. But it is essential to wit that he should bear the sword with ease; that for the wit the weapon should be light if the blow be heavy; that there should be no question of his being encumbered with his instrument or laying open his guard. But humour can be of the finest and yet lay open the guard or confess its inconsistency. When Voltaire said, commenting on the judicial murder of Byng, “In England they kill one Admiral to encourage the others,” it would immediately be recognized as humour. But we rightly class Voltaire as a wit, because he represents the consistent human reason detesting an inconsistency. We shall be very wrong if we despise him as a wit, for that French clearness has depths of irony; there is, for instance, more than is seen at a glance in the very word ‘encourage’. But it is true that the wit is here a judge independent of the judges, unaffected by the King or the Admiral or the English Courtmartial or the mob. He is abstract justice recording a contradiction. But when Falstaff (a model of the humorist become or becoming conscious) cries out in desperate bravado, “They hate us youth,” the incongruity between the speech and the corpulent old humbug of a speaker is present to his own mind, as well as to ours. He also discovers a contradiction, but it is in himself; for Falstaff really did bemuse himself with youthful companionship which he knew to be like a drug or a dream; and indeed Shakespeare himself, in one at least of the Sonnets, becomes bitterly conscious of the same illusion. There is therefore in humour, or at least in the origins of humour, something of this idea of the eccentric caught in the act of eccentricity and brazening it out; something of one surprised in disarray and become conscious of the chaos within. Wit corresponds to the divine virtue of justice, in so far as so dangerous a virtue can belong to man. Humour corresponds to the human virtue of humility and is only more divine because it has, for the moment, more sense of the mysteries.
Da ultimo, il principio che il racconto poliziesco, come ogni forma letteraria, parte da un’idea e non si mette semplicemente in cammino per trovarne una, si applica anche al suo dettaglio più materiale e meccanico. Là dove la storia verte sulla detezione, è pur necessario che lo scrittore cominci dall’interno, benché il detective si accosti dall’esterno. Ogni buon problema di questo tipo ha origine in una nozione positiva, che è in se stessa una nozione semplice; qualche fatto della vita quotidiana che lo scrittore può ricordare e il lettore può dimenticare. Ma comunque sia, un racconto dev’essere fondato su una verità; e per quanto vi si possa aggiungere dell’oppio, non dev’essere semplicemente un sogno d’oppio.
L’UMORISMO
L’UMORISMO, nell’uso moderno del termine, significa una percezione del comico o dell’incongruo di un tipo speciale; generalmente distinto dall’Arguzia, in quanto da un lato più sottile, dall’altro più vago. È dunque un termine che non solo si rifiuta di essere definito, ma in un certo senso si vanta di essere indefinibile; e sarebbe comunemente considerata una carenza di umorismo il cercare una definizione dell’umorismo. L’uso moderno del termine, tuttavia, non è affatto l’uso primario o necessario di esso; ed è uno di quei casi, più rari di quanto comunemente si supponga, in cui la derivazione offre almeno un avvicinamento alla definizione. Tutti sanno che «Humor», nel senso latino di «umidità», fu qui applicato come parte dell’antica teoria fisiologica, secondo la quale i caratteri degli uomini variavano a seconda delle proporzioni di certe diverse secrezioni nel corpo umano; come, per esempio, che il predominio del flemma producesse l’umore flemmatico. Al tempo del pieno consolidamento della lingua inglese, era così divenuto possibile per Ben Jonson e altri usare la parola «umore» piuttosto nel senso di «la passione dominante». A ciò si accompagnava necessariamente un’idea di esagerazione; e alla fine del processo il carattere di un umorista era più o meno identico a ciò che noi chiameremmo un eccentrico. Le fasi successive dello sviluppo, che sono piuttosto lente e sottili, corrispondono ai vari gradi in cui l’eccentrico è divenuto consapevole della propria eccentricità. L’Inghilterra è sempre stata particolarmente ricca di questi eccentrici; e in Inghilterra, dove ogni cosa era meno logica e più casuale che negli altri paesi, l’eccentrico rimase a lungo, per così dire, per metà inconsapevolmente e per metà consapevolmente umoristico. La fusione, e gli inizi del significato moderno, possono forse essere datati intorno al tempo dei romanzi di Waverley di Walter Scott; quando Guy Mannering si lamenta del consigliere Pleydell come di «un umorista dal cervello balzano». Poiché Pleydell è davvero deriso per le sue piccole vanità o bizzarrie; ma egli stesso partecipa alla risata e coglie l’umorismo del proprio umore. Da allora la parola è venuta usandosi sempre più esclusivamente per l’umorismo consapevole; e in genere per un apprezzamento piuttosto profondo e delicato delle assurdità altrui.
Nondimeno rimane attaccata alla parola Umorismo, specialmente quando la si bilancia con la parola Arguzia, una sorta di tradizione o atmosfera che appartiene ai vecchi eccentrici la cui eccentricità era sempre volontaria e non di rado cieca. La distinzione è sottile; ma uno degli elementi che permangono in questa fusione è un certo senso di essere derisi, oltre che di ridere. Comporta qualche confessione di debolezza umana; laddove l’arguzia è piuttosto l’intelletto umano che esercita tutta la sua forza, sia pure forse su un piccolo punto. L’arguzia è la ragione sul suo seggio di giudizio; e benché i colpevoli possano essere toccati con leggerezza, il punto è che il giudice non è toccato affatto. Ma l’umorismo ha sempre in sé una qualche idea dell’umorista stesso che si trova in svantaggio e preso negli intrichi e nelle contraddizioni della vita umana. È un grave errore sottovalutare l’Arguzia come qualcosa di banale; poiché per certi scopi di satira essa può davvero essere la spada dello spirito, e il satirico non porta la spada invano. Ma è essenziale all’arguzia che egli porti la spada con disinvoltura; che per l’arguto l’arma sia leggera anche se il colpo è pesante; che non vi sia questione ch’egli sia impacciato dal suo strumento o scopra la propria guardia. Ma l’umorismo può essere del più fine eppure scoprire la guardia o confessare la propria incoerenza. Quando Voltaire disse, commentando l’assassinio giudiziario di Byng, «In Inghilterra ammazzano un ammiraglio per incoraggiare gli altri», ciò verrebbe immediatamente riconosciuto come umorismo. Ma noi giustamente classifichiamo Voltaire come un arguto, perché egli rappresenta la coerente ragione umana che detesta un’incoerenza. Avremo molto torto se lo disprezziamo come arguto, poiché quella chiarezza francese ha profondità d’ironia; vi è, per esempio, più di quanto si scorga a prima vista nella stessa parola «incoraggiare». Ma è vero che qui l’arguto è un giudice indipendente dai giudici, non influenzato dal Re o dall’Ammiraglio o dalla corte marziale inglese o dalla folla. Egli è la giustizia astratta che registra una contraddizione. Ma quando Falstaff (un modello dell’umorista divenuto o che sta divenendo consapevole) grida in disperata spavalderia: «Ci odiano, noi giovani», l’incongruità tra il discorso e il corpulento vecchio impostore che lo pronuncia è presente alla sua stessa mente, come alla nostra. Anch’egli scopre una contraddizione, ma è in se stesso; poiché Falstaff davvero si stordiva con la compagnia giovanile che sapeva essere come una droga o un sogno; e invero Shakespeare stesso, in almeno uno dei Sonetti, diventa amaramente consapevole della stessa illusione. Vi è dunque nell’umorismo, o almeno nelle origini dell’umorismo, qualcosa di questa idea dell’eccentrico colto nell’atto dell’eccentricità e che la sfoggia sfrontatamente; qualcosa di uno sorpreso in disordine e divenuto consapevole del caos che ha dentro. L’arguzia corrisponde alla virtù divina della giustizia, nella misura in cui una virtù così pericolosa può appartenere all’uomo. L’umorismo corrisponde alla virtù umana dell’umiltà ed è più divino solo perché ha, per il momento, un maggior senso dei misteri.
If there be so much of enlightenment to be gathered from the history of the word, there is very little to be gathered from any of the attempts at a scientific history of the thing. The speculations on the nature of any reaction to the risible belong to the larger and more elementary subject of Laughter and are for the department of psychology; according to some, almost for that of physiology. Whatever be their value touching the primitive function of laughter, they throw very little light on the highly civilized product of humour. It may well be questioned whether some of the explanations are not too crude even for the crudest origins; that they hardly apply even to the savage and certainly do not apply to the child. It has been suggested, for example, that all laughter had its origin in a sort of cruelty, in an exultation over the pain or ignominy of an enemy; but it is very hard even for the most imaginative psychologist to believe that, when a baby bursts out laughing at the image of the cow jumping over the moon, he is really finding pleasure in the probability of the cow breaking her leg when she comes down again. The truth is that all these primitive and prehistoric origins are largely unknown and possibly unknowable; and like all the unknown and unknowable are a field for furious wars of religion. Such primary human causes will always be interpreted differently according to different philosophies of human life. Another philosophy would say, for instance, that laughter is due not to an animal cruelty but to a purely human realization of the contrast between man’s spiritual immensity within and his littleness and restriction without, for it is itself a joke that a house should be larger inside than out. According to such a view, the very incompatability between the sense of human dignity and the perpetual possibility of incidental indignities, produces the primary or archetypal joke of the old gentleman sitting down suddenly on the ice. We do not laugh thus when a tree or a rock tumbles down; because we do not know the sense of self-esteem or serious importance within. But such speculations in psychology, especially in primitive psychology, have very little to do with the actual history of comedy as an artistic creation.
There is no doubt that comedy existed as an artistic creation many thousands of years ago, in the case of peoples whose life and letters we can sufficiently understand to appreciate the fine shades of meaning; especially, of course, in the case of the Greeks. It is difficult for us to say how far it existed in civilizations more remote of which the records are for us more stiff and symbolic; but the very limitation of symbolism which makes it hard for us to prove its existence should warn us against assuming without evidence that it did not exist. We know more about Greek humour than about Hittite humour, at least partly for the simple reason that we know Greek better than we know any sort of colloquial Hittite; and while what applies to Hittite applies too in a less degree to Hebrew, a case like that of early Hebrew presents something of the same problem of limitation. But without any attempts to settle such problems of scholarship, it is hard to believe that the highest sense of human satire was not present in the words of Job. “Truly you are wise and wisdom will die with you”; or that no perception of a poetic contrast was felt by so great a poet when he said of Behemoth, commonly identified with the hippopotamus; “Canst thou play with him as with a bird?” It is probable that the Chinese civilization, in which the quality of the quaint and the fantastic has flowered with a beautiful luxuriance for many centuries, could also quote fairly early examples of the same order of fancy.
In any case, humour is in the very foundations of our European literature, which alone is quite sufficiently a part of ourselves for the full appreciation of so subtle and sometimes sub-conscious a quality. Even a schoolboy can see it in such scenes of Aristophanes as that in which the dead man sits up in indignation at having to pay the toll of the Styx, and says he would rather come to life again; or when Dionysus asks to see the wicked in hell and is answered by a gesture pointing at the audience. Before the period of intellectual controversies in Athens, indeed, we generally find in Greek poetry, as in the greater part of all human folk lore, that the joke is a practical joke. To a robust taste, however, it is none the less of a joke for that. For the joke of Odysseus calling himself Noman is not, as some suppose, a sort of trivial pun or verbalism; the joke is in the gigantic image of the raging Cyclops, roaring as if to rend the mountains, after being defeated by something so simple and so small. And this example is worth noting; as representing what is really the fun of all the fairy-tales; the notion of something apparently omnipotent made impotent by some tiny trick. This fairy-tale idea is undoubtedly one of the primitive fountains from which flows the long winding stream of historic humour. When Puss in Boots persuades the boastful magician to turn into a mouse and be eaten, it almost deserves to be called wit.
After these two early expressions, the practical joke of the folk-tale and the more philosophic fun of the Old Comedy, the history of humour is simply the history of literature. It is especially the history of European literature; for this sane sense of the incongruous is one of the highest qualities balancing the European spirit. It would be easy to go through the rich records of every nation and note this element in almost every novel or play, and in not a few poems or philosophical works. There is naturally no space for such a survey; but three great names, one English, one French and a third Spanish, may be mentioned for their historical quality; since they opened new epochs and even their few superiors were still their followers. The first of these determining names is that of Chaucer, whose urbanity has done something to conceal his real originality. Medieval civilization had a very powerful sense of the grotesque, as is apparent in its sculpture alone; but it was in a sense a fighting sentiment; it dealt with dragons and devils; it was alive, but it was very decidedly kicking. Chaucer brought into this atmosphere a cool air of true comedy; a sort of incongruity most incongruous in that world. In his personal sketches we have a new and very English element, of at once laughing at people and liking them. The whole of humorous fiction, if not the whole of fiction, dates from the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales. Rather later, Rabelais opened a new chapter by showing that intellectual things could be treated with the energy of high spirits and a sort of pressure of physical exuberance, which was itself humorous in its very human abandon. He will always be the inspiration of a certain sort of genial impatience; and the moments when the great human mind boils over like a pot. The Renaissance itself was, of course, such a boiling, but the elements were some of them more poisonous; though a word should be said for the tonics of that time, the humour of Erasmus and of More. Thirdly, there appeared with the great Cervantes an element new in its explicit expression; that grand and very Christian quality of the man who laughs at himself. Cervantes was himself more chivalrous than most men when he began to mock at chivalry. Since his time, humour in this purely humorous sense, the confession of complexity and weakness already remarked upon, has been a sort of secret of the high culture of the West. The influence of Cervantes and Rabelais, and the rest runs through all modern letters, especially our own; taking on a shrewd and acid tang in Swift, a more delicate and perhaps more dubious taste in Sterne, passing on through every sort of experiment of essay or comedy, pausing upon the pastoral gaiety of Goldsmith or going on finally to bring forth, like a great birth of giants, the walking caricatures of Dickens. Nor is it altogether a national accident that the tradition has here been followed in our own nation. For it is true that humour, in the special and even limited sense here given to it, humour as distinct from wit, from satire, from irony or from many things that may legitimately produce amusement, has been a thing strongly and specially present in English life and letters. That we may not in turn depreciate the wit and logic of the rest of the world, it will be well to remember that humour does originate in the half-conscious eccentric, that it is in part a confession of inconsistency, but, when all is said, it has added a new beauty to human life. It may even be noted that there has appeared especially in England a new variety of humour, more properly to be called Nonsense. Nonsense may be described as humour which has for the moment renounced all connection with wit. It is humour that abandons all attempt at intellectual justification; and does not merely jest at the incongruity of some accident or practical joke, as a by-product of real life, but extracts and enjoys it for its own sake. Jabberwocky is not a parody on anything; the Jumblies are not a satire on anybody; they are folly for folly’s sake on the same lines as art for art’s sake, or more properly beauty for beauty’s sake; and they do not serve any social purpose except perhaps the purpose of a holiday. Here again it will be well to remember that even the work of humour should not consist entirely of holidays. But this art of nonsense is a valuable contribution to culture; and it is very largely, or almost entirely, an English contribution. So cultivated and competent a foreign observer as M. Emile Cammaerts has remarked that it is so native as to be at first quite unmeaning to foreigners. This is perhaps the latest phase in the history of humour; but it will be well even in this case to preserve what is so essential a virtue of humour; the virtue of proportion. Humour, like wit, is related however indirectly, to truth and the eternal virtues; as it is the greatest incongruity of all to be serious about humour, so it is the worst sort of pomposity to be monotonously proud of humour; for it is itself the chief antidote to pride; and has been, ever since the time of the Book of Proverbs, the hammer of fools.
Se dalla storia della parola si può raccogliere tanta luce, ben poca se ne può trarre da uno qualsiasi dei tentativi di una storia scientifica della cosa. Le speculazioni sulla natura di ogni reazione al ridicolo appartengono al soggetto più ampio ed elementare del Riso, e spettano al dipartimento della psicologia; secondo alcuni, quasi a quello della fisiologia. Qualunque sia il loro valore riguardo alla funzione primitiva del riso, esse gettano ben poca luce sul prodotto altamente civilizzato dell’umorismo. Ci si può ben chiedere se alcune di queste spiegazioni non siano troppo grossolane persino per le origini più grossolane; se a stento si applichino persino al selvaggio e di certo non si applichino affatto al bambino. È stato suggerito, per esempio, che ogni riso avesse origine in una sorta di crudeltà, in un’esultanza per il dolore o l’ignominia di un nemico; ma è assai arduo persino per il più fantasioso degli psicologi credere che, quando un neonato scoppia a ridere all’immagine della mucca che salta sopra la luna, egli tragga davvero piacere dalla probabilità che la mucca si rompa una zampa nel ricadere a terra. La verità è che tutte queste origini primitive e preistoriche sono in gran parte ignote e forse inconoscibili; e, come tutto ciò che è ignoto e inconoscibile, sono un campo per furiose guerre di religione. Simili cause umane primarie saranno sempre interpretate in modo diverso a seconda delle diverse filosofie della vita umana. Un’altra filosofia direbbe, per esempio, che il riso è dovuto non a una crudeltà animale ma a una presa di coscienza puramente umana del contrasto tra l’immensità spirituale dell’uomo dentro di sé e la sua piccolezza e ristrettezza al di fuori, poiché è già di per sé uno scherzo che una casa sia più grande dentro che fuori. Secondo tale visione, la stessa incompatibilità tra il senso della dignità umana e la perpetua possibilità di indegnità occasionali produce lo scherzo primario o archetipico del vecchio signore che si siede all’improvviso sul ghiaccio. Non ridiamo così quando un albero o una roccia rovinano a terra, perché non conosciamo il senso di stima di sé o di seria importanza che vi è dentro. Ma simili speculazioni psicologiche, specialmente nella psicologia primitiva, hanno assai poco a che fare con la storia reale della commedia come creazione artistica.
Non v’è dubbio che la commedia sia esistita come creazione artistica molte migliaia di anni fa, presso popoli la cui vita e le cui lettere possiamo comprendere abbastanza da apprezzarne le sottili sfumature di significato; specialmente, s’intende, nel caso dei Greci. È difficile per noi dire fino a che punto essa esistesse in civiltà più remote, i cui documenti risultano per noi più rigidi e simbolici; ma la limitazione stessa del simbolismo, che ci rende arduo provarne l’esistenza, dovrebbe metterci in guardia dal presumere senza prove che non esistesse. Sappiamo di più sull’umorismo greco che su quello ittita, almeno in parte per la semplice ragione che conosciamo il greco meglio di qualsiasi forma di ittita colloquiale; e mentre ciò che vale per l’ittita vale anche, in grado minore, per l’ebraico, un caso come quello dell’ebraico antico presenta qualcosa del medesimo problema di limitazione. Ma senza alcun tentativo di risolvere simili questioni erudite, è difficile credere che il più alto senso della satira umana non fosse presente nelle parole di Giobbe: «Voi siete davvero savi, e con voi morirà la sapienza»; o che nessuna percezione di un contrasto poetico fosse avvertita da un poeta così grande quando disse di Behemoth, comunemente identificato con l’ippopotamo: «Puoi tu giocare con lui come con un uccello?». È probabile che la civiltà cinese, in cui la qualità del bizzarro e del fantastico è fiorita con una bella lussureggianza per molti secoli, potrebbe anch’essa citare esempi assai antichi del medesimo ordine di fantasia.
In ogni caso, l’umorismo è nelle fondamenta stesse della nostra letteratura europea, la quale è di per sé parte di noi a sufficienza per il pieno apprezzamento di una qualità tanto sottile e talvolta subconscia. Persino uno scolaretto può coglierlo in scene di Aristofane come quella in cui il morto si rizza sdegnato al dover pagare il pedaggio dello Stige, e dice che preferirebbe tornare in vita; o quando Dioniso chiede di vedere i malvagi all’inferno e gli si risponde con un gesto che indica il pubblico. Prima del periodo delle controversie intellettuali ad Atene, invero, troviamo generalmente nella poesia greca, come nella maggior parte di tutto il folclore umano, che lo scherzo è uno scherzo pratico. A un gusto robusto, tuttavia, non per questo esso è meno uno scherzo. Poiché lo scherzo di Odisseo che si fa chiamare Nessuno non è, come alcuni suppongono, una sorta di banale gioco di parole o verbalismo; lo scherzo sta nell’immagine gigantesca del Ciclope infuriato, ruggente come per squarciare le montagne, dopo essere stato sconfitto da qualcosa di così semplice e così piccolo. E questo esempio merita di essere notato, in quanto rappresenta ciò che è davvero il divertimento di tutte le fiabe: l’idea di qualcosa in apparenza onnipotente reso impotente da qualche minuscolo trucco. Questa idea fiabesca è senza dubbio una delle sorgenti primitive da cui scorre il lungo e tortuoso fiume dell’umorismo storico. Quando il Gatto con gli Stivali persuade il vanaglorioso mago a mutarsi in un topo per essere mangiato, ciò merita quasi di essere chiamato arguzia.
Dopo queste due prime espressioni, lo scherzo pratico del racconto popolare e il divertimento più filosofico della Commedia Antica, la storia dell’umorismo è semplicemente la storia della letteratura. È soprattutto la storia della letteratura europea, poiché questo sano senso dell’incongruo è una delle più alte qualità che equilibrano lo spirito europeo. Sarebbe facile scorrere i ricchi annali di ogni nazione e notare questo elemento in quasi ogni romanzo o dramma, e in non pochi poemi od opere filosofiche. Non v’è naturalmente spazio per una simile rassegna; ma tre grandi nomi, uno inglese, uno francese e un terzo spagnolo, meritano di essere menzionati per la loro qualità storica, poiché aprirono nuove epoche e persino i loro pochi superiori restarono comunque loro seguaci. Il primo di questi nomi determinanti è quello di Chaucer, la cui urbanità ha in parte contribuito a celarne la vera originalità. La civiltà medievale possedeva un fortissimo senso del grottesco, come appare dalla sua sola scultura; ma era in un certo senso un sentimento battagliero; trattava di draghi e di diavoli; era vivo, ma scalciava assai decisamente. Chaucer portò in quell’atmosfera una fresca aria di vera commedia; una sorta di incongruità quanto mai incongrua in quel mondo. Nei suoi ritratti personali abbiamo un elemento nuovo e assai inglese, quello di ridere della gente e insieme di volerle bene. L’intera narrativa umoristica, se non l’intera narrativa, data dal Prologo dei Racconti di Canterbury. Un po’ più tardi, Rabelais aprì un nuovo capitolo mostrando che le cose intellettuali potevano essere trattate con l’energia dell’alto spirito e con una sorta di pressione di esuberanza fisica, che era essa stessa umoristica nel suo abbandono tanto umano. Egli sarà sempre l’ispirazione di una certa forma di geniale impazienza, e dei momenti in cui la grande mente umana trabocca come una pentola. Il Rinascimento stesso fu, s’intende, un simile ribollire, ma alcuni degli elementi erano più velenosi; benché si debba spendere una parola per i tonici di quel tempo, l’umorismo di Erasmo e di Moro. In terzo luogo, comparve col grande Cervantes un elemento nuovo nella sua espressione esplicita: quella grande e assai cristiana qualità dell’uomo che ride di se stesso. Cervantes fu egli stesso più cavalleresco della maggior parte degli uomini quando cominciò a farsi beffe della cavalleria. Dal suo tempo in poi, l’umorismo in questo senso puramente umoristico, la confessione di complessità e debolezza già rilevata, è stato una sorta di segreto dell’alta cultura d’Occidente. L’influenza di Cervantes e Rabelais, e degli altri, attraversa tutte le lettere moderne, specialmente le nostre; assumendo un sapore acuto e acido in Swift, un gusto più delicato e forse più dubbio in Sterne, passando attraverso ogni sorta di esperimento di saggio o commedia, indugiando sulla gaiezza pastorale di Goldsmith o giungendo infine a partorire, come una grande nascita di giganti, le caricature ambulanti di Dickens. Né è del tutto un caso nazionale che la tradizione sia stata qui seguita nella nostra stessa nazione. Poiché è vero che l’umorismo, nel senso speciale e persino limitato qui attribuitogli, l’umorismo distinto dall’arguzia, dalla satira, dall’ironia o da molte cose che possono legittimamente produrre divertimento, è stato qualcosa di fortemente e specialmente presente nella vita e nelle lettere inglesi. Affinché non svalutiamo a nostra volta l’arguzia e la logica del resto del mondo, sarà bene ricordare che l’umorismo trae davvero origine dall’eccentrico semicosciente, che è in parte una confessione d’incoerenza, ma che, tutto sommato, ha aggiunto una nuova bellezza alla vita umana. Si può persino notare che è comparsa specialmente in Inghilterra una nuova varietà di umorismo, più propriamente da chiamarsi Nonsenso. Il Nonsenso può descriversi come umorismo che ha per il momento rinunciato a ogni legame con l’arguzia. È umorismo che abbandona ogni tentativo di giustificazione intellettuale; e non si limita a scherzare sull’incongruità di qualche incidente o scherzo pratico, come sottoprodotto della vita reale, ma la estrae e la gode per se stessa. Jabberwocky non è una parodia di nulla; i Jumblies non sono una satira di nessuno; sono follia per amor della follia sulla stessa linea dell’arte per l’arte, o più propriamente della bellezza per amor della bellezza; e non servono ad alcuno scopo sociale se non forse allo scopo di una vacanza. Anche qui sarà bene ricordare che persino l’opera dell’umorismo non dovrebbe consistere interamente di vacanze. Ma quest’arte del nonsenso è un prezioso contributo alla cultura, ed è in gran parte, o quasi interamente, un contributo inglese. Un osservatore straniero tanto colto e competente come il signor Emile Cammaerts ha osservato che essa è così autoctona da risultare dapprima del tutto priva di senso agli stranieri. Questa è forse l’ultima fase nella storia dell’umorismo; ma sarà bene anche in questo caso preservare ciò che è una virtù tanto essenziale dell’umorismo: la virtù della proporzione. L’umorismo, come l’arguzia, è legato per quanto indirettamente alla verità e alle virtù eterne; e come è la più grande incongruità di tutte prendere sul serio l’umorismo, così è la peggior specie di pomposità essere monotonamente fieri dell’umorismo; poiché esso è di per sé il principale antidoto all’orgoglio, ed è stato, fin dal tempo del Libro dei Proverbi, il martello degli stolti.
FICTION AS FOOD
I have been asked to explain what I meant by saying that “Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.” I have no notion when I said it or where I said it, or even whether I said it; in the sense that I do not now remember ever saying it at all. But I do know why I said it; if I ever said it at all. That is the advantage of believing in what some call dogma and others call logic. Some people seem to imagine that a man being sceptical and changing his beliefs, or even a man being cynical and disregarding his beliefs, is a sort of advantage to him in liberality and flexibility of mind. The truth is exactly the other way. By the very laws of the mind, it is more difficult to remember disconnected things than connected things; and a man is much more in control of a whole range of controversy if he has connected beliefs than if he had never had anything but disconnected doubts. Therefore I can immediately understand the sentence submitted to me, as if it were a sentence made up by somebody else; as perhaps it was.
Literature is a luxury, because it is part of what is popularly called “having the best of everything”. Matthew Arnold would have been pained to be called popular; but he said what is really the same thing as the popular saying; that Culture is knowing the best that has been said and thought. Literature is indeed one of those nobler luxuries which a well-governed state would extend to all, and even regard as necessities in that nobler sense. But it is a luxury in the plain sense that human beings can do without it and still be tolerably human, or even tolerably happy. But human beings cannot be human without some field of fancy or imagination; some vague idea of the romance of life; and even some holiday of the mind in a romance that is a refuge from life.
Every healthy person at some period must feed on fiction as well as fact; because fact is a thing which the world gives to him, whereas fiction is a thing which he gives to the world. It has nothing to do with a man being able to write; or even with his being able to read. Perhaps its best period is that of childhood, and what is called playing or pretending. But it is still true when the child begins to read or sometimes (heaven help him) to write. Anybody who remembers a favourite fairy-story will have a strong sense of its original solidity and richness and even definite detail; and will be surprised, if he re-reads it in later life, to find how few and bald were the words which his own imagination made not only vivid but varied. And even the errand-boy who reads hundreds of penny-dreadfuls, or the lady who read hundreds of novels from the circulating library, were living an imaginative life which did not come wholly from without.
Now nobody supposes that all those things which feed the hunger for fiction would commend themselves to the palate of literature. Literature is only that rare sort of fiction which rises to a certain standard of objective beauty and truth. When a child, almost as soon as he can speak, has invented the imaginary family of Pubbles, with father and mother and naughty child all complete, nobody supposes that the psychology of the house of Pubbles is differentiated as delicately as that of the family of Poynton, in a story by Henry James. When the lady has followed and forgotten a hundred heroines in their wanderings through mysterious suburban flats or murderous country rectories, nobody supposes that each of them remains even for her a portrait, as vivid as Elizabeth Bennet or Becky Sharp. It is not a thing like having an appreciation of a good wine; it is a thing like
having an appetite for a square meal; it is not a vintage but a viand.
Now this general need is connected with the deepest things in man; and the strangest thing about him, which is being a man. As a large mirror will make one room look like two rooms, so the mind of man is from the first a double mind; a thing of reflection and living in two worlds at once. The caveman who was not content that reindeers should be real—did something that no other animal ever has done or apparently ever will do. Of course, we cannot prove that the animal has not imagination in the inferior sense. For all we can prove, the rhinoceros may have an Invisible Playmate; and yet realize with his reason that “it is but a rhinoceros of air; that lingers in the garden there.”
Scientifically speaking, we cannot demonstrate that the rabbit has not an imaginary family of rabbits, on the lines of Brer Rabbit, as well as the somewhat large and increasing family which the rabbit produces in the ordinary way of business. But there is such a thing as common sense; and I think our common sense inclines us to suppose that any such artistic daydream, if it exists in beasts and birds, is much more rudimentary and stationary; and has certainly never advanced to the point of expression, even in fairy-tales or penny-dreadfuls. But for man some form of this fanciful experience is essential as a mere fact of experience. If he has not that daydream all his day, he is not man; and if he is not man, there is nobody to write about and nobody to write about him.
I was a great reader of novels until I began to review them, when I naturally left off reading them. I do not mean to admit that I did them any injustice; I studied and sampled them with the purpose of being strictly fair; but I do not call that ‘novel reading’ in the old enchanting sense. If I read them thoroughly I still read them rapidly; which is quite against my instincts for the mere luxury of reading. When I was a boy and really had a new adventure story, when I was a young man and read my first few detective stories, I did not enjoy precipitation, but actually enjoyed delay. The pleasure was so intense that I was always putting it off. For it is one of the two or three big blunders in modern morality to suppose that the strongest eagerness expresses itself in extravagance. The strongest eagerness always expresses itself in thrift. That is why the French Revolution was French and not English; why the careful peasants have turned the world upside-down, while the careless labourers have cheerfully left it as it was. When a child’s soul is in the most starry ecstasy of greed he desires to have his cake, not to eat it. I am English myself, and I have never managed to be thrifty about anything else.
LA NARRATIVA COME NUTRIMENTO
Mi è stato chiesto di spiegare che cosa intendessi dicendo che «La letteratura è un lusso; la narrativa è una necessità». Non ho idea di quando lo dissi o dove lo dissi, e nemmeno se lo dissi; nel senso che ora non ricordo affatto di averlo mai detto. Ma so bene perché lo dissi, ammesso che lo abbia mai detto. È questo il vantaggio di credere in ciò che alcuni chiamano dogma e altri chiamano logica. Certuni sembrano immaginare che un uomo scettico e mutevole nelle proprie convinzioni, o persino un uomo cinico e noncurante delle proprie convinzioni, ne tragga una sorta di vantaggio in liberalità e flessibilità di mente. La verità è esattamente l’opposto. Per le leggi stesse della mente, è più difficile ricordare cose sconnesse che cose connesse; e un uomo domina assai meglio un intero campo di controversia se possiede convinzioni connesse che se non avesse mai avuto altro che dubbi sconnessi. Perciò posso comprendere immediatamente la frase che mi è stata sottoposta, come se fosse una frase composta da qualcun altro; come forse è stato.
La letteratura è un lusso, perché è parte di ciò che nel linguaggio comune si chiama «avere il meglio di ogni cosa». Matthew Arnold si sarebbe addolorato di essere detto popolare; eppure disse ciò che in fondo coincide col detto popolare: che la Cultura è conoscere il meglio che sia stato detto e pensato. La letteratura è davvero uno di quei lussi più nobili che uno Stato ben governato estenderebbe a tutti, e considererebbe persino come necessità in quel senso più alto. Ma è un lusso nel senso schietto che gli esseri umani possono farne a meno e restare tollerabilmente umani, o persino tollerabilmente felici. Gli esseri umani, però, non possono essere umani senza qualche campo di fantasia o d’immaginazione; qualche vaga idea del romanzesco della vita; e persino qualche vacanza della mente in una fantasia che sia un rifugio dalla vita.
Ogni persona sana, in qualche periodo, deve nutrirsi di narrativa non meno che di fatti; perché il fatto è cosa che il mondo dà a lui, mentre la narrativa è cosa che egli dà al mondo. Ciò non ha nulla a che vedere con la capacità di un uomo di scrivere; e nemmeno con quella di leggere. Forse il suo periodo migliore è quello dell’infanzia, e ciò che si chiama giocare o far finta. Ma resta vero anche quando il bambino comincia a leggere o talvolta (che il cielo lo aiuti) a scrivere. Chiunque ricordi una fiaba prediletta avrà una viva sensazione della sua originaria solidità e ricchezza e persino del suo preciso dettaglio; e si stupirà, rileggendola più tardi nella vita, di scoprire quanto poche e spoglie fossero le parole che la sua stessa immaginazione rese non solo vivide ma varie. E persino il garzone di bottega che legge centinaia di romanzi da quattro soldi, o la dama che leggeva centinaia di romanzi presi in prestito dalla biblioteca circolante, vivevano una vita immaginativa che non veniva interamente dal di fuori.
Ora, nessuno suppone che tutte quelle cose che nutrono la fame di narrativa siano gradite al palato della letteratura. La letteratura è soltanto quella rara specie di narrativa che si eleva a un certo livello di bellezza e verità oggettiva. Quando un bambino, quasi appena sa parlare, ha inventato l’immaginaria famiglia dei Pubbles, con padre e madre e bimbo cattivo al completo, nessuno suppone che la psicologia della casa dei Pubbles sia differenziata tanto delicatamente quanto quella della famiglia dei Poynton, in un racconto di Henry James. Quando la dama ha seguìto e dimenticato cento eroine nei loro vagabondaggi attraverso misteriosi appartamenti di periferia o sanguinarie canoniche di campagna, nessuno suppone che ciascuna di esse rimanga, anche solo per lei, un ritratto vivido quanto Elizabeth Bennet o Becky Sharp. Non è una cosa come avere un buon gusto per un buon vino; è una cosa come
avere appetito per un pasto sostanzioso; non è un’annata pregiata ma una pietanza.
Ora, questo bisogno generale è connesso con le cose più profonde dell’uomo; e con la cosa più strana che lo riguarda, cioè l’essere un uomo. Come un grande specchio fa apparire una stanza come due stanze, così la mente dell’uomo è fin dal principio una mente doppia; una cosa di riflessione, che vive in due mondi al tempo stesso. L’uomo delle caverne che non si accontentava che le renne fossero reali — fece qualcosa che nessun altro animale ha mai fatto né, a quanto pare, mai farà. Certo, non possiamo provare che l’animale non abbia immaginazione nel senso inferiore. Per quanto ne possiamo provare, il rinoceronte potrebbe avere un Compagno di Giochi Invisibile; e tuttavia rendersi conto con la sua ragione che «non è che un rinoceronte d’aria, che s’indugia là nel giardino».
Scientificamente parlando, non possiamo dimostrare che il coniglio non abbia un’immaginaria famiglia di conigli, sulla falsariga di Fratel Coniglio, oltre alla famiglia alquanto numerosa e crescente che il coniglio produce nel consueto corso degli affari. Ma esiste una cosa chiamata buon senso; e credo che il nostro buon senso ci inclini a supporre che ogni simile fantasticheria artistica, se pure esiste nelle bestie e negli uccelli, sia assai più rudimentale e stazionaria; e non sia certo mai avanzata fino al punto dell’espressione, nemmeno in fiabe o in romanzi da quattro soldi. Ma per l’uomo qualche forma di questa esperienza fantasiosa è essenziale come puro fatto d’esperienza. Se non ha quella fantasticheria per tutta la sua giornata, non è un uomo; e se non è un uomo, non c’è nessuno di cui scrivere e nessuno che scriva di lui.
Fui un grande lettore di romanzi finché non cominciai a recensirli, dopodiché naturalmente smisi di leggerli. Non intendo ammettere di aver fatto loro alcuna ingiustizia; li studiai e li assaggiai col proposito di essere rigorosamente equo; ma questo non lo chiamo «leggere romanzi» nell’antico senso incantato. Se li leggevo a fondo, li leggevo comunque in fretta; il che è del tutto contrario ai miei istinti per il puro lusso della lettura. Quando ero ragazzo e avevo davvero una nuova storia d’avventura, quando ero giovane e lessi i miei primi racconti polizieschi, non godevo della precipitazione, ma godevo anzi dell’indugio. Il piacere era così intenso che continuavo a rimandarlo. Poiché è uno dei due o tre grandi errori della moralità moderna il supporre che la più forte bramosia si esprima nella prodigalità. La più forte bramosia si esprime sempre nella parsimonia. È per questo che la Rivoluzione francese fu francese e non inglese; per questo i parsimoniosi contadini hanno messo il mondo sottosopra, mentre i noncuranti braccianti l’hanno allegramente lasciato com’era. Quando un bambino ha l’anima nella più stellata estasi dell’avidità, desidera avere la sua torta, non mangiarla. Io stesso sono inglese, e non sono mai riuscito a essere parsimonioso in nient’altro.
But about my early novel reading I was as thrifty as a French peasant— and as greedy. I loved to look at the mere solid bulk of a sensational novel as one looks at the solid bulk of a cheese; to open the first page, dally with the first paragraph, and then shut it again, feeling how little pleasure I had lost as yet. And my favourite novelists are still those great nineteenth-century novelists who give an impression of bewildering bulk and variety, Scott or Dickens or Thackeray. I have artistic pleasure as keen or keener, I have moral sympathy as intense or more intense with many later writers; with the hard-hitting mot juste of Stevenson’s stories or the insurgent irony of Mr. Belloc’s. But Stevenson has one fault as a novelist, that he must be read quickly. Novels like Belloc’s Mr. Burden must not only be read quickly but fiercely; they describe a short, sharp struggle; the mood both of writer and reader is heroic and abnormal, like that of two men fighting a duel. But Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens had the mysterious trick or talent of the inexhaustible novel.
Even when we have come to the end of the story we somehow feel that it is endless. People say they have read Pickwick five times or fifty times or five hundred times. For my part I have only read Pickwick once. Since then I have lived in Pickwick; walked into it when and where I chose, as a man walks into his club. But whenever I have walked in, it seemed to me that I found something new. I am not sure that stringent modern artists like Stevenson or Mr. Belloc do not actually suffer from the strictness and swiftness of their art. If a book is a book to be lived in, it should be (like a house to be lived in) a little untidy.
Apart from such chaotic classics as these, my own taste in novel reading is one which I am prepared in a rather especial manner, not only to declare, but to defend. My taste is for the sensational novel, the detective story, the story about death, robbery and secret societies; a taste which I share in common with the bulk at least of the male population of this world. There was a time in my own melodramatic boyhood when I became quite fastidious in this respect. I would look at the first chapter of any new novel as a final test of its merits. If there was a murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I read the story. If there was no murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I dismissed the story as tea-table twaddle, which it often really was. But we all lose a little of that fine edge of austerity and idealism which sharpened our spiritual standard in our youth. I have come to compromise with the tea-table and to be less insistent about the sofa. As long as a corpse or two turns up in the second, the third, nay even the fourth or fifth chapter, I make allowance for human weakness, and I ask no more. But a novel without any death in it is still to me a novel without any life in it. I admit that the very best of the tea-table novels are great art—for instance, Emma or Northanger Abbey. Sheer elemental genius can make a work of art out of anything. Michelangelo might make a statue out of mud, and Jane Austen could make a novel out of tea—that much more contemptible substance. But on the whole I think that a tale about one man killing another man is more likely to have something in it than a tale in which, all the characters are talking trivialities without any of that instant and silent presence of death which is one of the strong spiritual bonds of all mankind. I still prefer the novel in which one person does another person to death to the novel in which all the persons are feebly (and vainly) trying to get the others to come to life.
But I have another and more important quarrel about the sensational novel. There seems to be a very general idea that the romance of the tomahawk will be (or will run the risk of being) more immoral than the romance of the teapot. This I violently deny. And in this I have the support of practically all the old moral traditions of our civilization and of every civilization. High or low, good or bad, clever or stupid, a moral story almost always meant a murderous story. For the old Greeks a moral play was one full of madness and slaying. For the great medievals a moral play was one which exhibited the dancing of the devil and the open jaws of hell. For the great Protestant moralists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a moral story meant a story in which a parricide was struck by lightning or a boy was drowned for fishing on a Sunday. For the more rationalistic moralists of the eighteenth century, such as Hogarth, Richardson, and the author of Sandford and Merton, all agreed that shocking calamities could properly be indicated as the result of evil doing; that the more shocking those calamities were the more moral they were. It is only in our exhausted and agnostic age that the idea has been started that if one is moral one must not be melodramatic.
But I believe that sensational novels are the most moral part of modern fiction, and I believe it upon two converging lines, such as make all real conviction. It is, I think, the fact that melodramatic fiction is moral and not immoral. And it is, I think, the abstract truth that any literature that represents our life as dangerous and startling is truer than any literature that represents it as dubious and languid. For life is a fight and is not a conversation.
THE SOUL IN EVERY LEGEND
I THINK it was that very fine and subtle writer, Vernon Lee, who lapsed into literary heresy by saying that a poet is always a pantheist. I could only accept this in the amended form that no poet, by any possibility, has ever been or ever will be a pantheist. It was precisely because Walt Whitman sometimes tried on principle to be a pantheist, that so great a genius just missed being a poet. Shelley did not miss being a poet; but he did miss being a pantheist. A deep imaginative instinct, beyond all his cheap philosophies, made him always do something which is the soul of imagination, but the very opposite of universalism. It made him insulate the object of which he wrote; making the cloud or the bird as solitary as possible in the sky. Imagination demands an image. An image demands a background. The background should be equal and level, or vast and vague, but only for the sake of the image. In writing of the skylark Shelley compares that unfortunate wild fowl to a lady in a tower, to a star, to a rose, to all sorts of things that are not in the least like a skylark. But they all have one touch, the touch of separation and solitude. Now pantheism means that nothing is thus separated; that the divine essence is equally distributed at any given moment in all the atoms of the universe; and that he who would see it imaginatively must see it as a whole. I deny that this was done by Shelley the poet; whatever may have been done by Shelley the prig. When he heard the skylark speaking to him like a spirit out of heaven, I deny that he heard at the same moment the crowing of cocks, the screaming of cockatoos, the gobbling of turkeys, the cawing of rooks, the clucking of hens and the pandemonium of the parrot-house at the Zoo; or that for him, at that moment, all these things mingled in one harmony or music of the spheres.
Ma quanto alle mie prime letture di romanzi ero parsimonioso come un contadino francese — e altrettanto avido. Amavo contemplare la mera solida mole di un romanzo sensazionale come si contempla la solida mole di un formaggio; aprire la prima pagina, indugiare sul primo paragrafo, e poi richiuderlo, sentendo quanto poco piacere avessi ancora perduto. E i miei romanzieri prediletti sono tuttora quei grandi romanzieri dell’Ottocento che danno un’impressione di sconcertante mole e varietà: Scott o Dickens o Thackeray. Provo un piacere artistico altrettanto acuto, o più acuto, provo una simpatia morale altrettanto intensa, o più intensa, con molti scrittori più recenti; con il duro mot juste dei racconti di Stevenson o con l’insorgente ironia di quelli di Mr. Belloc. Ma Stevenson ha un difetto come romanziere: che va letto in fretta. Romanzi come il Mr. Burden di Belloc non solo vanno letti in fretta, ma con foga; descrivono una lotta breve e aspra; lo stato d’animo tanto dello scrittore quanto del lettore è eroico e anormale, come quello di due uomini che si battono a duello. Ma Scott, Thackeray e Dickens possedevano il misterioso trucco o talento del romanzo inesauribile.
Anche quando siamo giunti alla fine della storia, in qualche modo sentiamo che essa è senza fine. La gente dice d’aver letto Pickwick cinque volte o cinquanta volte o cinquecento volte. Da parte mia ho letto Pickwick una volta sola. Da allora ho vissuto dentro Pickwick; vi sono entrato quando e dove ho voluto, come un uomo entra nel suo club. Ma ogni volta che vi sono entrato, mi è parso di trovarvi qualcosa di nuovo. Non sono sicuro che artisti moderni rigorosi come Stevenson o Mr. Belloc non soffrano in realtà del rigore e della rapidità della loro arte. Se un libro è un libro da abitare, dovrebbe essere (come una casa da abitare) un poco in disordine.
A parte tali caotici classici come questi, il mio gusto personale in fatto di lettura di romanzi è uno che sono pronto, in un modo del tutto particolare, non soltanto a dichiarare, ma a difendere. Il mio gusto è per il romanzo sensazionale, il racconto poliziesco, la storia di morte, di rapina e di società segrete; un gusto che condivido con almeno la maggior parte della popolazione maschile di questo mondo. Ci fu un tempo, nella mia melodrammatica fanciullezza, in cui divenni assai schizzinoso al riguardo. Guardavo il primo capitolo di ogni nuovo romanzo come prova definitiva dei suoi meriti. Se c’era un uomo assassinato sotto il divano nel primo capitolo, leggevo la storia. Se non c’era alcun uomo assassinato sotto il divano nel primo capitolo, liquidavo la storia come ciance da tavolino da tè, quale spesso davvero era. Ma tutti perdiamo un poco di quel fine taglio di austerità e idealismo che affinava il nostro criterio spirituale nella giovinezza. Sono giunto a scendere a compromessi col tavolino da tè e a essere meno intransigente riguardo al divano. Purché uno o due cadaveri saltino fuori nel secondo, nel terzo, anzi persino nel quarto o quinto capitolo, faccio la tara alla debolezza umana e non chiedo di più. Ma un romanzo senza alcuna morte dentro è per me ancora un romanzo senza alcuna vita dentro. Ammetto che i migliori in assoluto tra i romanzi da tavolino da tè sono grande arte — per esempio Emma o L’abbazia di Northanger. Il puro genio elementare può fare un’opera d’arte da qualunque cosa. Michelangelo saprebbe fare una statua col fango, e Jane Austen sapeva fare un romanzo col tè — sostanza assai più spregevole. Ma nel complesso ritengo che un racconto in cui un uomo ne uccide un altro abbia più probabilità di contenere qualcosa di un racconto in cui tutti i personaggi discorrono di banalità senza quella istantanea e silenziosa presenza della morte che è uno dei forti legami spirituali di tutta l’umanità. Preferisco ancora il romanzo in cui una persona ne mette un’altra a morte al romanzo in cui tutte le persone tentano fiaccamente (e invano) di far tornare in vita le altre.
Ma ho un’altra e più importante disputa a proposito del romanzo sensazionale. Sembra esservi un’idea assai diffusa secondo cui il romanzesco del tomahawk sarà (o correrà il rischio d’essere) più immorale del romanzesco della teiera. Questo lo nego con veemenza. E in ciò ho il sostegno di pressoché tutte le antiche tradizioni morali della nostra civiltà e di ogni civiltà. Alta o bassa, buona o cattiva, arguta o stupida, una storia morale ha quasi sempre significato una storia sanguinaria. Per gli antichi Greci una pièce morale era una piena di follia e di strage. Per i grandi uomini del Medioevo una pièce morale era quella che esibiva la danza del diavolo e le fauci spalancate dell’inferno. Per i grandi moralisti protestanti del Seicento e del Settecento una storia morale significava una storia in cui un parricida veniva colpito dal fulmine o un ragazzo annegava per aver pescato di domenica. Quanto ai moralisti più razionalistici del Settecento, come Hogarth, Richardson e l’autore di Sandford e Merton, tutti concordavano che sciagure sconvolgenti potessero opportunamente essere additate come conseguenza del malfare; e che quanto più sconvolgenti fossero tali sciagure, tanto più morali esse erano. È soltanto nella nostra età esausta e agnostica che è sorta l’idea che, se si è morali, non si debba essere melodrammatici.
Ma io credo che i romanzi sensazionali siano la parte più morale della narrativa moderna, e lo credo lungo due linee convergenti, quali fanno ogni reale convinzione. È, io penso, un fatto che la narrativa melodrammatica è morale e non immorale. Ed è, io penso, la verità astratta che ogni letteratura la quale rappresenti la nostra vita come pericolosa e sorprendente è più vera di ogni letteratura che la rappresenti come dubbia e languida. Poiché la vita è una lotta e non una conversazione.
L’ANIMA IN OGNI LEGGENDA
PENSO che fosse quello scrittore assai fine e sottile, Vernon Lee, a cadere nell’eresia letteraria dicendo che un poeta è sempre panteista. Potrei accettarlo soltanto nella forma emendata secondo cui nessun poeta, in nessun modo possibile, è mai stato o mai sarà panteista. Fu appunto perché Walt Whitman talvolta si sforzava per principio d’essere panteista, che un genio così grande mancò per un soffio d’essere poeta. Shelley non mancò d’essere poeta; ma mancò d’essere panteista. Un profondo istinto immaginativo, al di là di tutte le sue filosofie da quattro soldi, gli faceva sempre fare qualcosa che è l’anima dell’immaginazione, ma l’esatto opposto dell’universalismo. Gli faceva isolare l’oggetto di cui scriveva; rendendo la nuvola o l’uccello quanto più solitari possibile nel cielo. L’immaginazione esige un’immagine. Un’immagine esige uno sfondo. Lo sfondo dovrebbe essere uniforme e piano, o vasto e vago, ma solo per amore dell’immagine. Scrivendo dell’allodola, Shelley paragona quello sventurato uccello selvatico a una dama in una torre, a una stella, a una rosa, a ogni sorta di cose che non somigliano minimamente a un’allodola. Ma tutte hanno un tocco, il tocco della separazione e della solitudine. Ora, panteismo significa che nulla è così separato; che l’essenza divina è ugualmente distribuita in ogni dato istante in tutti gli atomi dell’universo; e che chi voglia vederla immaginativamente deve vederla come un tutto. Nego che questo sia stato fatto da Shelley il poeta; qualunque cosa possa essere stata fatta da Shelley il presuntuoso. Quando udì l’allodola parlargli come uno spirito venuto dal cielo, nego che udisse nel medesimo istante il canto dei galli, lo strido dei cacatua, il gloglottare dei tacchini, il gracchiare dei corvi, il chiocciare delle galline e il pandemonio della voliera dei pappagalli allo Zoo; o che per lui, in quel momento, tutte queste cose si fondessero in un’unica armonia o musica delle sfere.
I do not deny that the poet may write an ode to a parrot as well as to a skylark; or for that matter a serenade to a penguin or a pelican. But he will prefer the parrot outside the parrot-house. He will prefer the pelican in the wilderness. In short, he will aim at seeing the object against a background, as one sees a star in the sky or an island in the sea. He will aim at seeing the object in the strict sense of distinguishing the object. And this element of distinction would alone distinguish such a poet from the vulgar universality of the ordinary pantheist. For the rest, Shelley’s poetry very seldom expressed Shelley’s philosophy. When once he began to sing, he generally sang the creeds that he refused to say. In the skylark, for instance, he does not in the least proclaim the doctrine of Universal Nature or the Immanence of God. What he does proclaim is the doctrine of Original Sin, or the Fall of Man. When the skylark ceases merely to flutter and begins really to fly, to sweep and to soar; when the verse takes on the swing and powerful pulsation of great poetry, it is not even about the isolation of the bird but the stranger isolation of the man. “We look before and after … our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”
But if we could scorn Hate and pride and fear, If we were things born Not to shed a tear —
There the pantheistic poet is telling a tale not told by all the parrots in the Zoological Gardens; but rather by the Bird of Paradise that came with us out of the Garden of Eden.
Mr. Bernard Shaw, in a preface to one of his plays, advances a thesis in science and then propounds it as a thesis in philosophy. It might well be described as a progressive pantheism, as compared with the static pantheism more commonly associated with pantheists. The current criticism will probably be that it is all very well for Mr. Shaw to talk philosophy, but he knows nothing about science. To me this seems the exact contrary of the fact. He has always been very well equipped with facts in his scientific controversies; and his logic, of which I can judge better, seems to me very conclusive on the purely scientific question. He is strictly scientific in refusing the test of cutting off a mouse’s tail, for instance, as affecting the question of acquired characteristics. As he very sensibly points out, an arbitrary amputation by somebody else is not an acquired characteristic at all; any more than we can talk of a man acquiring a railway accident. The Lamarckian suggestion is that the will counts; and nobody wills a railway accident. I think Mr. Shaw is entirely successful in his science; where I begin to doubt is precisely in his philosophy, and especially when he propounds it as a religion. And I doubt it because it ignores, as the more static pantheism ignores the same rather indescribable element which I can only call identity. I can only dimly describe it as the conviction that it is It.
Mr. Shaw suggests that we should all pool our legends and treat them all equally as legends; that is, as allegories. This, I fancy, is very much what was really done by the Neo-Platonists and other syncretists of the pagan sunset on the Mediterranean. They made a pool of all the legends; and it was rather a stagnant pool. Indeed the Mediterranean itself would henceforth have been little more than a stagnant pool, but for the wind of the spirit that blew on it from Bethlehem and Calvary; that is from real places alive with stories at least believed to be real. When the new world found something to follow, it had to be a man and not a myth, a tragedy and not a mummery. If the new world finds a new religion now, it is much more likely to be in Spiritualist miracles and a Spiritualist plan of heaven and earth, all to be believed down to the last detail, than in the weary impartiality of the pool of the Neo-Platonists. That pool may be a sea into which all religions ultimately run. It is certainly not a spring in which any religions originally rise. We shall never make a new legend by advertising for an allegory. The great myth comes from men who believe they have found a great truth, at least at first and that a vivid and final truth. If there be, as I believe, such a central truth, this is the only way in which men can receive that truth. But even if it be only a delusion, this is the only way in which it can be denied.
In short, it is not enough for a religion to include everything. It must include everything and something over. That is it must include everything and include something as well. It must answer that deep and mysterious human demand for everything; even if the nature of that demand be too deep to be easily defined in logic. It will never cease to be described in poetry. We might almost say that all poetry is a description of it. Even when you have only natural religion, you will still have supernatural poetry. And it will be poetic because it is particular, not because it is general. The new priest may proclaim, “The sea is God, the land is God and the sky is God; but yet there are not three Gods, but one God.” But even if the old priest be silenced, the old poet will always answer, “God is in a cave; God is in a stable; God is disguised and hidden. I alone know where he is; he is herding the cattle of Admetus; he is pouring out the wine of Cana.” The new republic may make the philosophical declaration, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all trees were evolved equal and endowed with the dignity of creative evolution.” But if in the silence that follows we overhear the poor nurse or the peasant mother telling fairy-tales to the children, she will always be saying, “And in the seventh garden beyond the seventh gate was the tree with the golden apples”, or “They sailed and sailed till they came to an island, and in the island was a meadow, and in the meadow the tree of life.”
Non nego che il poeta possa scrivere un’ode a un pappagallo non meno che a un’allodola; o, se è per questo, una serenata a un pinguino o a un pellicano. Ma preferirà il pappagallo fuori dalla voliera dei pappagalli. Preferirà il pellicano nel deserto. In breve, mirerà a vedere l’oggetto contro uno sfondo, come si vede una stella nel cielo o un’isola nel mare. Mirerà a vedere l’oggetto nel senso stretto di distinguere l’oggetto. E questo elemento di distinzione da solo distinguerebbe un tale poeta dalla volgare universalità dell’ordinario panteista. Per il resto, la poesia di Shelley assai di rado esprimeva la filosofia di Shelley. Una volta che cominciava a cantare, cantava per lo più i credi che rifiutava di professare. Nell’allodola, per esempio, egli non proclama minimamente la dottrina della Natura Universale o dell’Immanenza di Dio. Ciò che proclama è la dottrina del Peccato Originale, ossia della Caduta dell’Uomo. Quando l’allodola cessa di limitarsi a svolazzare e comincia davvero a volare, a librarsi e a slanciarsi; quando il verso assume lo slancio e la potente pulsazione della grande poesia, non riguarda nemmeno l’isolamento dell’uccello, ma il più strano isolamento dell’uomo. «Guardiamo prima e dopo… i nostri più dolci canti sono quelli che narrano del pensiero più triste».
Ma se potessimo sprezzare l’Odio e l’Orgoglio e la Paura, se fossimo creature nate a non versare lacrima —
Là il poeta panteista narra un racconto non narrato da tutti i pappagalli dei Giardini Zoologici; ma piuttosto dall’Uccello del Paradiso che venne con noi fuori dal Giardino dell’Eden.
Mr. Bernard Shaw, in una prefazione a una delle sue commedie, avanza una tesi scientifica e poi la propone come tesi di filosofia. La si potrebbe bene descrivere come un panteismo progressivo, in confronto al panteismo statico più comunemente associato ai panteisti. La critica corrente sarà probabilmente che va tutto molto bene che Mr. Shaw parli di filosofia, ma che egli non sa nulla di scienza. A me questo sembra l’esatto contrario del vero. Egli è sempre stato assai ben fornito di fatti nelle sue controversie scientifiche; e la sua logica, della quale posso giudicare meglio, mi pare assai conclusiva sulla questione puramente scientifica. È rigorosamente scientifico nel rifiutare la prova del taglio della coda a un topo, per esempio, come pertinente alla questione dei caratteri acquisiti. Come osserva molto sensatamente, un’amputazione arbitraria compiuta da qualcun altro non è affatto un carattere acquisito; non più di quanto possiamo dire che un uomo acquisti un incidente ferroviario. Il suggerimento lamarckiano è che la volontà conta; e nessuno vuole un incidente ferroviario. Penso che Mr. Shaw riesca pienamente nella sua scienza; dove comincio a dubitare è precisamente nella sua filosofia, e specialmente quando la propone come religione. E ne dubito perché essa ignora, come il panteismo più statico ignora, quel medesimo elemento piuttosto indescrivibile che posso soltanto chiamare identità. Posso solo descriverlo vagamente come la convinzione che Esso è Esso.
Mr. Shaw suggerisce che dovremmo mettere in comune tutte le nostre leggende e trattarle tutte allo stesso modo come leggende; cioè come allegorie. Questo, immagino, è molto ciò che davvero fecero i neoplatonici e altri sincretisti del tramonto pagano sul Mediterraneo. Fecero una pozza di tutte le leggende; ed era piuttosto una pozza stagnante. Anzi, il Mediterraneo stesso non sarebbe stato d’allora in poi molto più di una pozza stagnante, se non fosse stato per il vento dello spirito che soffiò su di esso da Betlemme e dal Calvario; cioè da luoghi reali, vivi di storie almeno credute reali. Quando il mondo nuovo trovò qualcosa da seguire, dovette essere un uomo e non un mito, una tragedia e non una farsa. Se il mondo nuovo trova ora una nuova religione, è molto più probabile che sia nei miracoli spiritisti e in un piano spiritista del cielo e della terra, da credere fin nell’ultimo dettaglio, che nella stanca imparzialità della pozza dei neoplatonici. Quella pozza può essere un mare in cui alla fine confluiscono tutte le religioni. Non è certo una sorgente in cui alcuna religione originariamente sgorga. Non faremo mai una nuova leggenda mettendo un annuncio per un’Allegoria. Il grande mito viene da uomini che credono d’aver trovato una grande Verità, almeno da principio, e una Verità vivida e definitiva. Se esiste, come io credo, una tale Verità centrale, questo è l’unico modo in cui gli uomini possono ricevere quella Verità. Ma anche se fosse soltanto un inganno, questo è l’unico modo in cui essa può essere negata.
In breve, non basta che una religione includa ogni cosa. Deve includere ogni cosa e qualcosa in più. Cioè deve includere ogni cosa e includere qualcosa per giunta. Deve rispondere a quella profonda e misteriosa richiesta umana di ogni cosa; anche se la natura di quella richiesta sia troppo profonda per essere facilmente definita in logica. Non cesserà mai d’essere descritta in poesia. Potremmo quasi dire che tutta la poesia è una descrizione di essa. Anche quando si ha soltanto una religione naturale, si avrà comunque poesia soprannaturale. E sarà poetica perché è particolare, non perché è generale. Il nuovo sacerdote potrà proclamare: «Il mare è Dio, la terra è Dio e il cielo è Dio; eppure non vi sono tre Dèi, ma un solo Dio». Ma anche se il vecchio sacerdote venisse ridotto al silenzio, il vecchio poeta risponderà sempre: «Dio è in una caverna; Dio è in una stalla; Dio è travestito e nascosto. Io solo so dov’egli è; sta pascolando il bestiame di Admeto; sta versando il vino di Cana». La nuova repubblica potrà fare la dichiarazione filosofica: «Riteniamo queste verità auto-evidenti, che tutti gli alberi furono creati per evoluzione uguali e dotati della dignità dell’evoluzione creatrice». Ma se nel silenzio che segue udiamo per caso la povera balia o la madre contadina narrare fiabe ai bambini, ella dirà sempre: «E nel settimo giardino oltre il settimo cancello c’era l’albero dalle mele d’oro», oppure: «Navigarono e navigarono finché giunsero a un’isola, e nell’isola c’era un prato, e nel prato l’albero della vita».
Now according to the old rationalistic criticism, it was enough to say of a fancy that it was fanciful. It was enough to say that a religion was a romance, and a romance a delusion. But men like Mr. Shaw have already left that behind, in the years of wandering starting from the Dublin of the Protestants and the Darwin of the Professors. They already realized that there is “a soul in every dogma”, that religion cannot be left out of account, that rationalism cannot be left in control. Now if we are to look sympathetically for the soul in every dogma, surely we must look for that something in the soul which makes it clothe itself in every case in a particular and personal body. If this particularism always stubbornly recurs even in poetry, how can it be left out of philosophy? What is the meaning of this incurable itch to give to airy nothing, or still more airy everything, a local habitation and a name? Why is it always something at once odd and objective, a precious fruit or a flying cup or a buried key, that symbolizes the mystery of the world? Why should not the world symbolize the world? Why should not a sphere sufficiently represent universalism; so that the faithful might be found adoring a plum-pudding or a cannon-ball? Why should not a spiral sufficiently represent progress; and the pious bow down before a corkscrew? In practice we know that it would be impossible to dissociate a Christmas pudding from the sacramental specialism of Christmas; and the worship of the corkscrew, that hieratic serpent, would probably be traced to the mysteries of Dionysius. In a word, why are all mysteries concerned with the notion of finding a particular thing in a particular place? If we are to find the real meaning of every element in mythology, what is the real meaning of that element in it? I can see only one possible answer that satisfies the new more serious and sympathetic study of religion, even among sceptics; and that is that there really is something to which all these fancies are what forgeries are to a signature; that if the soul could be satisfied with the truth it would find it a tale as particular, as positive and as personal; that the light which we follow first as a wide white star actually narrows as we draw nearer to it, till we find that trailing meteor is something like a light in a window or a candle in a room.
Ora, secondo la vecchia critica razionalistica, bastava dire di una fantasia che era fantasiosa. Bastava dire che una religione era un romanzo, e un romanzo un’illusione. Ma uomini come il signor Shaw si sono già lasciati tutto questo alle spalle, negli anni del vagabondaggio partiti dalla Dublino dei protestanti e dal Darwin dei professori. Avevano già capito che c’è «un’anima in ogni dogma», che la religione non può essere messa da parte, che il razionalismo non può restare al comando. Ora, se dobbiamo cercare con simpatia l’anima in ogni dogma, dobbiamo pure cercare quel qualcosa nell’anima che la spinge a rivestirsi in ogni caso di un particolare e personale corpo. Se questo particolarismo torna sempre ostinatamente, persino nella poesia, come si può escluderlo dalla filosofia? Qual è il senso di questo incurabile prurito di dare all’aereo nulla, o all’ancor più aereo tutto, un luogo e un nome? Perché è sempre qualcosa a un tempo bizzarro e oggettivo, un frutto prezioso o una coppa volante o una chiave sepolta, a simboleggiare il mistero del mondo? Perché il mondo non dovrebbe simboleggiare il mondo? Perché una sfera non dovrebbe bastare a rappresentare l’universalismo, sicché i fedeli si troverebbero ad adorare un budino di prugne o una palla di cannone? Perché una spirale non dovrebbe bastare a rappresentare il progresso, e i pii inchinarsi davanti a un cavatappi? In pratica sappiamo che sarebbe impossibile dissociare un budino natalizio dallo specialismo sacramentale del Natale; e il culto del cavatappi, quel serpente ieratico, verrebbe probabilmente fatto risalire ai misteri di Dioniso. In una parola, perché tutti i misteri riguardano l’idea di trovare una cosa particolare in un luogo particolare? Se dobbiamo trovare il vero significato di ogni elemento della mitologia, qual è il vero significato di quell’elemento in essa? Non vedo che una sola risposta possibile a soddisfare il nuovo studio, più serio e più partecipe, della religione, persino fra gli scettici; ed è che c’è davvero qualcosa a cui tutte queste fantasie stanno come i falsi stanno a una firma; che se l’anima potesse appagarsi della verità, la troverebbe un racconto altrettanto particolare, altrettanto positivo e altrettanto personale; che la luce che dapprima seguiamo come un’ampia stella bianca in realtà si restringe man mano che le ci accostiamo, finché scopriamo che quella meteora fuggitiva è qualcosa come una luce a una finestra o una candela in una stanza.
PART TWO: PARTICULAR BOOKS AND WRITERS
THE MACBETHS
IN STUDYING any eternal tragedy the first question necessarily is what part of tragedy is eternal. If there be any element in man’s work which is in any sense permanent it must have this characteristic, that it rebukes first one generation and then another, but rebukes them always in opposite directions and for opposite faults. The ideal world is always sane. The real world is always mad. But it is mad about a different thing every time; all the things that have been are changing and inconstant. The only thing that is really reliable is the thing that has never been. All very great classics of art are a rebuke to extravagance not in one direction but in all directions. The figure of a Greek Venus is a rebuke to the fat women of Rubens and also a rebuke to the thin women of Aubrey Beardsley. In the same way, Christianity, which in its early years fought the Manicheans because they did not believe in anything but spirit, has now to fight the Manicheans because they do not believe in anything but matter. This is perhaps the test of a very great work of classic creation, that it can be attacked on inconsistent grounds, and that it attacks its enemies on inconsistent grounds. Here is a broad and simple test. If you hear a thing being accused of being too tall and too short, too red and too green, too bad in one way and too bad also in the opposite way, then you may be sure that it is very good.
This preface is essential if we are to profit by the main meaning of Macbeth. For the play is so very great that it covers much more than it appears to cover; it will certainly survive our age as it has survived its own; it will certainly leave the twentieth century behind as calmly and completely as it has left the seventeenth century behind. Hence if we ask for the meaning of this classic we must necessarily ask the meaning for our own time. It might have another shade of meaning for another period of time. If, as is possible, there should be a barbaric return and if history is any kind of guide, it will destroy everything else before it destroys great literature. The high and civilized sadness of Virgil was enjoyed literally through the darkest instant of the Dark Ages. Long after a wealthier generation has destroyed Parliament they will retain Shakespeare. Men will enjoy the greatest tragedy of Shakespeare even in the thick of the greatest tragedy of Europe.
It is quite possible that Shakespeare may come to be enjoyed by men far simpler than the men for whom he wrote. Voltaire called him a great savage; we may come to the time far darker than the Dark Ages when he will really be enjoyed by savages. Then the story of Macbeth will be read by a man in the actual position of Macbeth. Then the Thane of Glamis may profit by the disastrous superstitions of the Thane of Cawdor. Then the Thane of Cawdor may really resist the impulse to be King of Scotland. There would be a very simple but a real moral if Macbeth could read Macbeth. “Do not listen to evil spirits; do not let your ambition run away with you; do not murder old gentlemen in bed; do not kill other people’s wives and children as a part of diplomacy; for if you do these things it is highly probable that you will have a bad time.” That is the lesson that Macbeth would have learnt from Macbeth; that is the lesson that some barbarians of the future may possibly learn from Macbeth. And it is a true lesson. Great work has something to say quite simply to the simple. The barbarians would understand Macbeth as a solid warning against vague and violent ambition; and it is such a warning, and they would take along with it this lesson also, which is none the worse because perhaps only the barbarians could adequately understand it. “Distrust those malevolent spirits who speak flatteringly to you. They are not benevolent spirits; if they were they would be more likely to beat you about the head.”
Before we talk then of the lesson of a great work of art, let us realize that it has a different lesson for different ages, because it is itself eternal. And let us realize that such a lesson will be in our own day not absolute but suited to the particular vices or particular misfortunes of that day. We are not in any danger at the moment of the positive and con crete actions which correspond to those of Macbeth. The good old habit of murdering kings (which was the salvation of so many commonwealths in the past) has fallen into desuetude. The idea of such a play must be for us (and for our sins) more subtle. The idea is more subtle but it is almost inexpressibly great. Let us before reading the play consider if only for a moment what is the main idea of Macbeth for modern men.
One great idea on which all tragedy builds is the idea of the continuity of human life. The one thing a man cannot do is exactly what all modern artists and free lovers are always trying to do. He cannot cut his life up into separate sections. The case of the modern claim for freedom in love is the first and most obvious that occurs to the mind; therefore I use it for this purpose of illustration. You cannot have an idyll with Maria and an episode with Jane; there is no such thing as an episode. There is no such thing as an idyll. It is idle to talk about abolishing the tragedy of marriage when you cannot abolish the tragedy of sex. Every flirtation is a marriage; it is a marriage in this frightful sense; that it is irrevocable. I have taken this case of sexual relations as one out of a hundred; but of any case in human life the thing is true. The basis of all tragedy is that man lives a coherent and continuous life. It is only a worm that you can cut in two and leave the severed parts still alive. You can cut a worm up into episodes and they are still living episodes. You can cut a worm up into idylls and they are quite brisk and lively idylls. You can do all this to him precisely because he is a worm. You cannot cut a man up and leave him kicking, precisely because he is a man. We know this because man even in his lowest and darkest manifestation has always this characteristic of physical and psychological unity. His identity continues long enough to see the end of many of his own acts; he cannot be cut off from his past with a hatchet; as he sows so shall he reap.
PARTE SECONDA: LIBRI E SCRITTORI PARTICOLARI
I MACBETH
NELLO STUDIARE una qualsiasi tragedia eterna la prima domanda è necessariamente quale parte della tragedia sia eterna. Se vi è nell’opera dell’uomo un qualche elemento che sia in un qualche senso permanente, esso deve avere questa caratteristica: che rimprovera prima una generazione e poi un’altra, ma le rimprovera sempre in direzioni opposte e per colpe opposte. Il mondo ideale è sempre sano. Il mondo reale è sempre folle. Ma è folle per una cosa diversa ogni volta; tutte le cose che sono state stanno mutando e sono incostanti. L’unica cosa davvero affidabile è la cosa che non è mai stata. Tutti i grandissimi classici dell’arte sono un rimprovero alla stravaganza non in una direzione ma in tutte le direzioni. La figura di una Venere greca è un rimprovero alle donne grasse di Rubens e insieme un rimprovero alle donne magre di Aubrey Beardsley. Allo stesso modo, il Cristianesimo, che nei suoi primi anni combatté i Manichei perché non credevano in nulla se non nello spirito, deve ora combattere i Manichei perché non credono in nulla se non nella materia. Questa è forse la prova di una grandissima opera di creazione classica: che essa può essere attaccata su terreni incoerenti, e che attacca i suoi nemici su terreni incoerenti. Ecco una prova ampia e semplice. Se udite una cosa accusata di essere troppo alta e troppo bassa, troppo rossa e troppo verde, troppo cattiva in un modo e troppo cattiva anche nel modo opposto, allora potete essere certi che è molto buona.
Questa premessa è essenziale se vogliamo trarre profitto dal significato principale del Macbeth. Poiché il dramma è così grande che copre molto più di quanto appaia coprire; sopravviverà certamente alla nostra età come è sopravvissuto alla propria; lascerà certamente il ventesimo secolo alle proprie spalle con la stessa calma e completezza con cui ha lasciato alle proprie spalle il diciassettesimo. Perciò, se domandiamo il significato di questo classico, dobbiamo necessariamente domandare il significato per il nostro tempo. Potrebbe avere un’altra sfumatura di significato per un altro periodo di tempo. Se, come è possibile, dovesse esservi un ritorno barbarico, e se la storia è una qualche guida, esso distruggerà ogni altra cosa prima di distruggere la grande letteratura. L’alta e civile mestizia di Virgilio fu goduta letteralmente nell’istante più buio dei Secoli Bui. Molto dopo che una generazione più ricca avrà distrutto il Parlamento, essi conserveranno Shakespeare. Gli uomini godranno della più grande tragedia di Shakespeare persino nel folto della più grande tragedia d’Europa.
È del tutto possibile che Shakespeare giunga a essere goduto da uomini assai più semplici di quelli per cui scrisse. Voltaire lo chiamò un grande selvaggio; potremmo giungere a un tempo assai più buio dei Secoli Bui in cui egli sarà davvero goduto dai selvaggi. Allora la storia del Macbeth sarà letta da un uomo nella condizione stessa di Macbeth. Allora il Thane di Glamis potrà trarre profitto dalle disastrose superstizioni del Thane di Cawdor. Allora il Thane di Cawdor potrà davvero resistere all’impulso di farsi Re di Scozia. Vi sarebbe una morale assai semplice ma reale se Macbeth potesse leggere Macbeth. «Non dar retta agli spiriti maligni; non lasciare che la tua ambizione ti trascini; non assassinare vecchi signori nel letto; non uccidere le mogli e i figli altrui come parte della diplomazia; poiché, se fai queste cose, è altamente probabile che passerai un brutto momento.» Questa è la lezione che Macbeth avrebbe appreso dal Macbeth; questa è la lezione che alcuni barbari del futuro potranno forse apprendere dal Macbeth. Ed è una lezione vera. La grande opera ha qualcosa da dire assai semplicemente ai semplici. I barbari comprenderebbero il Macbeth come un solido monito contro un’ambizione vaga e violenta; ed esso è appunto un tale monito, e insieme ad esso essi coglierebbero anche questa lezione, che non è peggiore perché forse solo i barbari potrebbero adeguatamente comprenderla. «Diffida di quegli spiriti malevoli che ti parlano con lusinga. Non sono spiriti benevoli; se lo fossero, sarebbe più probabile che ti battessero sulla testa.»
Prima dunque di parlare della lezione di una grande opera d’arte, rendiamoci conto che essa ha una lezione diversa per età diverse, perché è essa stessa eterna. E rendiamoci conto che una tale lezione sarà, nel nostro tempo, non assoluta ma adatta ai vizi particolari o alle particolari sventure di quel tempo. Non siamo in questo momento in alcun pericolo delle azioni positive e concrete che corrispondono a quelle del Macbeth. La buona vecchia abitudine di assassinare i re (che fu la salvezza di tanti Stati in passato) è caduta in desuetudine. L’idea di un simile dramma deve essere per noi (e per i nostri peccati) più sottile. L’idea è più sottile, ma è quasi inesprimibilmente grande. Prima di leggere il dramma, consideriamo anche solo per un momento quale sia l’idea principale del Macbeth per gli uomini moderni.
Una grande idea su cui si costruisce ogni tragedia è l’idea della continuità della vita umana. L’unica cosa che un uomo non può fare è esattamente ciò che tutti gli artisti moderni e i liberi amanti cercano sempre di fare. Egli non può tagliare la propria vita in sezioni separate. Il caso della moderna rivendicazione della libertà in amore è il primo e il più ovvio che venga in mente; perciò lo uso a scopo d’illustrazione. Non puoi avere un idillio con Maria e un episodio con Jane; non esiste una cosa come un episodio. Non esiste una cosa come un idillio. È vano parlare di abolire la tragedia del matrimonio quando non puoi abolire la tragedia del sesso. Ogni flirt è un matrimonio; è un matrimonio in questo tremendo senso: che è irrevocabile. Ho preso questo caso dei rapporti sessuali come uno su cento; ma di qualsiasi caso della vita umana la cosa è vera. Il fondamento di ogni tragedia è che l’uomo vive una vita coerente e continua. È solo un verme quello che puoi tagliare in due lasciando ancora vive le parti recise. Puoi tagliare un verme in episodi ed essi restano episodi viventi. Puoi tagliare un verme in idilli ed essi sono idilli assai vivaci e brillanti. Puoi fare tutto ciò a lui appunto perché è un verme. Non puoi tagliare un uomo in due e lasciarlo a scalciare, appunto perché è un uomo. Sappiamo questo perché l’uomo, anche nella sua più bassa e oscura manifestazione, ha sempre questa caratteristica di unità fisica e psicologica. La sua identità perdura abbastanza a lungo da vedere la fine di molti dei suoi stessi atti; egli non può essere reciso dal proprio passato con un’ascia; come semina, così mieterà.
This then is the basis of all tragedy, this living and perilous continuity which does not exist in the lower creatures. This is the basis of all tragedy, and this is certainly the basis of Macbeth. The great ideas of Macbeth, uttered in the first few scenes with a tragic energy which has never been equalled perhaps in Shakespeare or out of him, is the idea of the enormous mistake a man makes if he supposes that one decisive act will clear his way. Macbeth’s ambition, though selfish and someway sullen, is not in itself criminal or morbid. He wins the title of Glamis in honourable war; he deserves and gets the title of Cawdor; he is rising in the world and has a not ignoble exhilaration in doing so. Suddenly a new ambition is presented to him (of the agency and atmosphere which presents it I shall speak in a moment) and he realizes that nothing lies across his path to the Crown of Scotland except the sleeping body of Duncan. If he does that one cruel thing, he can be infinitely kind and happy.
Here, I say, is the first and most formidable of the great actualities of Macbeth. You cannot do a mad thing in order to reach sanity. Macbeth’s mad resolve is not a cure even for his own irresolution. He was indecisive before his decision. He is, if possible, more indecisive after he has decided. The crime does not get rid of the problem. Its effect is so bewildering that one may say that the crime does not get rid of the temptation. Make a morbid decision and you will only become more morbid; do a lawlesss thing and you will only get into an atmosphere much more suffocating than that of law. Indeed, it is a mistake to speak of a man as ‘breaking out.’ The lawless man never breaks out; he breaks in. He smashes a door and finds himself in another room, he smashes a wall and finds himself in a yet smaller one. The more he shatters the more his habitation shrinks. Where he ends you may read in the end of Macbeth.
For us moderns, therefore, the first philosophical significance of the play is this; that our life is one thing and that our lawless acts limit us; every time we break a law we make a limitation. In some strange way hidden in the deeps of human psychology, if we build our palace on some unknown wrong it turns very slowly into our prison. Macbeth at the end of the play is not merely a wild beast; he is a caged wild beast. But if this is the thing to be put in a primary position there is something else that demands at least our second one. The second idea in the main story of Macbeth is, of course, that of the influence of evil suggestion upon the soul, particularly evil suggestion of a mystical and transcendental kind. In this connection the mystical character of the promptings is not more interesting than the mystical character of the man to whom they are especially sent. Mystical promptings are naturally sweet to a mystic. The character of Macbeth in this regard has been made the matter of a great deal of brilliant and futile discussion. Some critics have represented him as a burly silent soldier because he won battles for his country. Other critics have represented him as a feverish and futile decadent because he makes long practical speeches full of the most elaborate imagery. In the name of commonsense let it be remembered that Shakespeare lived before the time when unsuccessful poets thought it poetical to be decadent and unsuccessful soldiers thought it military to be silent. Men like Sidney and Raleigh and Essex could have fought as well as Macbeth and could have ranted as well as Macbeth. Why should Shakespeare shrink from making a great general talk poetry when half the great generals of his time actually wrote great poetry?
The whole legend, therefore, which some critics have based on the rich rhetoric of Macbeth: the legend that Macbeth was a febrile and egotistical coward because he liked the sound of his own voice, may be dismissed as a manifestation of the diseases of later days. Shakespeare meant Macbeth for a fine orator for he made fine speeches; he also meant him for a fine soldier because he made him not only win battles bravely but what is much more to the point, lose battles bravely; he made him, when overwhelmed by enemies in heaven and earth, die the death of a hero. But Macbeth is meant to be among other things an orator and a poet; and it is to Macbeth in this capacity that the evil supernatural appeal is made. If there be any such thing as evil influences coming from beyond the world, they have never been so suggestively indicated as they are here. They appeal, as evil always does, to the existence of a coherent and comprehensible scheme. It is the essence of a nightmare that it turns the whole cosmos against us. Two of their prophecies have been fulfilled; may it not be assumed then that the third will also be fulfilled?
Also they appeal, as evil always does (being slavish itself and believing all men slaves) to the inevitable. They put Macbeth’s good fortune before him as if it were not so much a fortune as a fate. In the same way imperialists sought to salve the consciences of Englishmen by giving them the offer of gold and empire with all the gloom of predestination. When the devil, and the witches who are the servants of the devil, wish to make a weak man snatch a crown that does not belong to him, they are too cunning to come to him and say “Will you be King?” They say without further parley, “All hail, Macbeth, that shall be king hereafter”. This weakness Macbeth really has; that he is easily attracted by that kind of spiritual fatalism which relieves the human creature of a great part of his responsibility. In this way there is a strange and sinister appropriateness in the way in which the promises of the evil spirits end in new fantasies; end, so to speak, as mere diabolical jokes. Macbeth accepts as a piece of unreasoning fate first his crime and then his crown. It is appropriate that this fate which he has accepted as external and irrational should end in incidents of mere extravagant bathos, in the walking forest and strange birth of Macduff. He has once surrendered himself with a kind of dark and evil faith, to a machinery of destiny that he can neither respect nor understand, and it is the proper sequel of this that the machinery should produce a situation which crushes him as something useless.
Questo dunque è il fondamento di ogni tragedia, questa continuità viva e pericolosa che non esiste nelle creature inferiori. Questo è il fondamento di ogni tragedia, e questo è certamente il fondamento del Macbeth. La grande idea del Macbeth, espressa nelle prime scene con un’energia tragica che forse non è mai stata eguagliata in Shakespeare né fuori di lui, è l’idea dell’enorme errore che un uomo commette se suppone che un solo atto decisivo gli aprirà la via. Macbeth nutre un’ambizione che, benché egoista e in qualche modo cupa, non è in sé criminale o morbosa. Egli conquista il titolo di Glamis in guerra onorevole; merita e ottiene il titolo di Cawdor; sta salendo nel mondo e ne prova un’esaltazione non ignobile. All’improvviso gli si presenta una nuova ambizione (dell’agente e dell’atmosfera che gliela presentano parlerò tra un momento), ed egli si rende conto che nulla si frappone sul suo cammino verso la Corona di Scozia se non il corpo addormentato di Duncan. Se compie quell’unica cosa crudele, potrà essere infinitamente buono e felice.
Qui, dico, è la prima e più formidabile delle grandi realtà del Macbeth. Non puoi compiere una cosa folle allo scopo di raggiungere la sanità mentale. La folle risoluzione di Macbeth non è una cura nemmeno per la sua stessa irresolutezza. Era indeciso prima della sua decisione. È, se possibile, ancora più indeciso dopo aver deciso. Il delitto non elimina il problema. Il suo effetto è così sconcertante che si può dire che il delitto non elimini la tentazione. Prendi una decisione morbosa e diventerai soltanto più morboso; compi un atto illegale ed entrerai soltanto in un’atmosfera assai più soffocante di quella della legge. Anzi, è un errore parlare di un uomo che «irrompe fuori». L’uomo senza legge non irrompe mai fuori; irrompe dentro. Sfonda una porta e si ritrova in un’altra stanza, sfonda una parete e si ritrova in una ancora più piccola. Più egli manda in frantumi, più la sua dimora si restringe. Dove egli finisce lo potete leggere nel finale del Macbeth.
Per noi moderni, dunque, il primo significato filosofico del dramma è questo: che la nostra vita è una cosa sola e che i nostri atti illegali ci limitano; ogni volta che infrangiamo una legge creiamo una limitazione. In qualche strano modo nascosto nelle profondità della psicologia umana, se costruiamo il nostro palazzo su qualche torto ignoto esso si trasforma assai lentamente nella nostra prigione. Macbeth, alla fine del dramma, non è semplicemente una belva selvaggia; è una belva selvaggia in gabbia. Ma se questa è la cosa da porre in posizione primaria, ve n’è un’altra che esige almeno la seconda. La seconda idea nella storia principale del Macbeth è, naturalmente, quella dell’influenza del suggerimento malvagio sull’anima, particolarmente il suggerimento malvagio di specie mistica e trascendentale. A questo proposito il carattere mistico delle sollecitazioni non è più interessante del carattere mistico dell’uomo a cui esse sono specialmente inviate. Le sollecitazioni mistiche sono naturalmente dolci a un mistico. Il carattere di Macbeth sotto questo riguardo è stato oggetto di una gran quantità di discussione brillante e futile. Alcuni critici lo hanno rappresentato come un rude e silenzioso soldato perché vinse battaglie per il suo paese. Altri critici lo hanno rappresentato come un decadente febbrile e futile perché pronuncia lunghi discorsi pratici pieni delle più elaborate immagini. In nome del buon senso si ricordi che Shakespeare visse prima del tempo in cui i poeti falliti ritenevano poetico essere decadenti e i soldati falliti ritenevano marziale essere silenziosi. Uomini come Sidney e Raleigh ed Essex avrebbero saputo combattere altrettanto bene di Macbeth e avrebbero saputo declamare altrettanto bene di Macbeth. Perché mai Shakespeare avrebbe dovuto rifuggire dal far parlare in poesia un grande generale, quando metà dei grandi generali del suo tempo scrissero in effetti grande poesia?
L’intera leggenda, dunque, che alcuni critici hanno fondato sulla ricca retorica di Macbeth — la leggenda che Macbeth fosse un vigliacco febbrile ed egotistico perché amava il suono della propria voce — può essere respinta come una manifestazione delle malattie dei tempi successivi. Shakespeare intese Macbeth come un fine oratore, poiché gli fece pronunciare fini discorsi; lo intese anche come un fine soldato, perché lo fece non solo vincere battaglie con coraggio, ma, ciò che più conta, perdere battaglie con coraggio; ne fece uno che, sopraffatto dai nemici in cielo e in terra, muore la morte di un eroe. Ma Macbeth è inteso a essere, tra le altre cose, un oratore e un poeta; ed è a Macbeth in questa veste che è rivolto il maligno appello soprannaturale. Se esiste una cosa come influssi maligni provenienti da oltre il mondo, essi non sono mai stati indicati in modo così suggestivo come qui. Essi fanno appello, come sempre fa il male, all’esistenza di uno schema coerente e comprensibile. È l’essenza di un incubo il fatto che esso rivolti contro di noi l’intero cosmo. Due delle loro profezie si sono avverate; non si può forse allora supporre che anche la terza si avvererà?
Inoltre essi fanno appello, come sempre fa il male (essendo esso stesso servile e credendo tutti gli uomini schiavi), all’inevitabile. Pongono davanti a Macbeth la sua buona sorte come se fosse non tanto una fortuna quanto un fato. Allo stesso modo gli imperialisti cercavano di lenire le coscienze degli inglesi offrendo loro oro e impero con tutta la tetraggine della predestinazione. Quando il diavolo, e le streghe che sono le serve del diavolo, vogliono indurre un uomo debole ad afferrare una corona che non gli appartiene, sono troppo scaltri per venire da lui e dire: «Vuoi essere Re?». Dicono senz’altro indugio: «Salve, Macbeth, che sarai re in avvenire». Questa debolezza Macbeth la possiede davvero: che è facilmente attratto da quella specie di fatalismo spirituale che solleva la creatura umana di gran parte della sua responsabilità. In questo modo vi è una strana e sinistra appropriatezza nel modo in cui le promesse degli spiriti maligni si concludono in nuove fantasie; si concludono, per così dire, come mere beffe diaboliche. Macbeth accetta come un pezzo di fato irragionevole prima il suo delitto e poi la sua corona. È appropriato che questo fato, che egli ha accettato come esterno e irrazionale, si concluda in incidenti di puro stravagante bathos, nella foresta che cammina e nella strana nascita di Macduff. Egli si è una volta consegnato, con una sorta di fede oscura e malvagia, a un meccanismo del destino che non può né rispettare né comprendere, ed è la conseguenza propria di ciò che il meccanismo produca una situazione che lo schiaccia come qualcosa d’inutile.
Shakespeare does not mean that Macbeth’s emotionalism and rich rhetoric prove him to be unmanly in any ordinary sense. But Shakespeare does mean, I think, to suggest that the man, virile in his essential structure, has this weak spot in his artistic temperament; that fear of the mere strength of destiny and of unknown spirits, of their strength as apart from their virtue, which is the only proper significance of the word superstition. No man can be superstitious who loves his God, even if the god be Mumbo Jumbo. Macbeth has something of this fear and fatalism; and fatalism is exactly the point at which rationalism passes silently into superstition. Macbeth, in short, has any amount of physical courage, he has even a great deal of moral courage. But he lacks what may be called spiritual courage; he lacks a certain freedom and dignity of the human soul in the universe, a freedom and dignity which one of the scriptural writers expresses as the difference between the servants and the sons of God.
But the man Macbeth and his marked but inadequate manliness, can only be expressed in connection with the character of his wife. And the question of Lady Macbeth immediately arouses again the controversies that have surrounded this play. Miss Ellen Terry and Sir Henry Irving acted Macbeth upon the theory that Macbeth was a feeble and treacherous man and that Lady Macbeth was a frail and clinging woman. A somewhat similar view of Lady Macbeth has been, I believe, consistently uttered by a distinguished American actress. The question as commonly stated, in short, is the question of whether Macbeth was really masculine, and second, of whether Lady Macbeth was not really feminine. The old critics assumed that because Lady Macbeth obviously ruled her husband she must have been a masculine woman. The whole inference of course is false. Masculine women may rule the Borough Council, but they never rule their husbands. The women who rule their husbands are the feminine women and I am entirely in accord with those who think that Lady Macbeth must have been a very feminine woman. But while some critics rightly insist on the feminine character of Lady Macbeth they endeavour to deprive Macbeth of that masculine character which is obviously the corollary of the other. They think Lady Macbeth must be a man because she rules. And on the same idiotic principle they think that Macbeth must be a woman or a coward or a decadent or something odd because he is ruled. The most masculine kind of man always is ruled. As a friend of mine once said, very truly, physical cowards are the only men who are not afraid of women.
The real truth about Macbeth and his wife is somewhat strange but cannot be too strongly stated. Nowhere else in all his wonderful works did Shakespeare describe the real character of the relations of the sexes so sanely, or so satisfactorily as he describes it here. The man and the woman are never more normal than they are in this abnormal and horrible story. Romeo and Juliet does not better describe love than this describes marriage. The dispute that goes on between Macbeth and his wife about the murder of Duncan is almost word for word a dispute which goes on at any suburban breakfast-table about something else. It is merely a matter of changing “Infirm of purpose, give me the daggers”, into “infirm of purpose, give me the postage stamps”. And it is quite a mistake to suppose that the woman is to be called masculine or even in any exclusive sense strong. The strengths of the two partners differ in kind. The woman has more of that strength on the spot which is called industry. The man has more of that strength in reserve which is called laziness.
But the acute truth of this actual relation is much deeper even than that. Lady Macbeth exhibits one queer and astounding kind of magnanimity which is quite peculiar to women. That is, she will take something that her husband dares not do but which she knows he wants to do and she will become more fierce for it than he is. For her, as for all very feminine souls (that is, very strong ones) selfishness is the only thing which is acutely felt as sin; she will commit any crime if she is not committing it only for herself. Her husband thirsts for the crime egotistically and therefore vaguely, darkly, and subconsciously, as a man becomes conscious of the beginnings of physical thirst. But she thirsts for the crime altruistically and therefore clearly and sharply, as a man perceives a public duty to society. She puts the thing in plain words, with an acceptance of extremes. She has that perfect and splendid cynicism of women which is the most terrible thing God has made. I say it without irony and without any undue enjoyment of the slight element of humour.
If you want to know what are the permanent relations of the married man with the married woman you cannot read it anywhere more accurately than in the little domestic idyll of Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth. Of a man so male and a woman so female, I cannot believe anything except that they ultimately save their souls. Macbeth was strong in every masculine sense up to the very last moment; he killed himself in battle. Lady Macbeth was strong in the very female sense which is perhaps a more courageous sense; she killed herself, but not in battle. As I say, I cannot think that souls so strong and so elemental have not retained those permanent possibilities of humility and gratitude which ultimately place the soul in heaven. But wherever they are they are together. For alone among so many of the figures of human fiction, they are actually married.
THE TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR
THE TRAGEDY of King Lear, on some of its elements perhaps the very greatest of all the Shakespearian tragedies, is relatively seldom played. It is even possible to have a dark suspicion that it is not universally read; with the usual deplorable result; that it is universally quoted. Perhaps nothing has done so much to weaken the greatest of English achievements, and to leave it open to facile revolt or fatigued reaction, than the abominable habit of quoting Shakespeare without reading Shakespeare. It has encouraged all the pompous theatricality which first created an idolatry and then an iconoclasm; all that florid tradition in which old playgoers and after dinner-speakers talked about the Bard or the Swan of Avon, until it was comparatively easy, at the end of the Victorian era, for somebody like Bernard Shaw to propose an Edwardian massacre of Bards and almost to insinuate that the swan was a goose. Most of the trouble came from what are called ‘Familiar Quotations’, which were hardly even representative or self-explanatory quotations. In almost all the well-known passages from Shakespeare, to quote the passage is to miss the point. It is almost needless to note what may be called the vulgar examples; as in the case of those who say that Shakespeare asks, “What is in a name?”; which is rather like saying that Shakespeare says murder must be done, and it were best if it were done quickly. The popular inference always is that Shakespeare thought that names do not matter; there being possibly no man on God’s earth who was less likely to think so, than the man who made such magnificent mouthfuls out of mandragora and hurricanes, of the names of Hesperides or Hercules. The remark has no point, except in the purely personal circumstances in which it has poignancy, in the mouth of a girl commanded to hate a man she loves, because of a name that seems to her to have nothing to do with him. The play now under consideration is no exception to this disastrous rule. The old woman who complained that the tragedy of Hamlet was so full of quotations would have found almost as many in the tragedy of King Lear. And they would have had the same character as those from Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet: that those who leave out the context really leave out the conception. They have a mysterious power of making the world weary of a few fixed and disconnected words, and yet leaving the world entirely ignorant of the real meaning of those words.
Shakespeare non intende che l’emotività e la ricca retorica di Macbeth provino che egli sia poco virile in un qualunque senso ordinario. Ma Shakespeare intende, io credo, suggerire che l’uomo, virile nella sua struttura essenziale, ha questo punto debole nel suo temperamento artistico: quella paura della mera forza del destino e degli spiriti ignoti, della loro forza in quanto distinta dalla loro virtù, che è l’unico proprio significato della parola superstizione. Nessun uomo può essere superstizioso se ama il suo Dio, anche se il dio fosse Mumbo Jumbo. Macbeth ha qualcosa di questa paura e di questo fatalismo; e il fatalismo è esattamente il punto in cui il razionalismo trapassa silenziosamente nella superstizione. Macbeth, in breve, possiede qualsiasi quantità di coraggio fisico, possiede persino una gran dose di coraggio morale. Ma gli manca ciò che si può chiamare coraggio spirituale; gli manca una certa libertà e dignità dell’anima umana nell’universo, una libertà e dignità che uno degli scrittori delle Scritture esprime come la differenza tra i servi e i figli di Dio.
Ma l’uomo Macbeth e la sua marcata ma inadeguata virilità possono essere espressi soltanto in connessione col carattere di sua moglie. E la questione di Lady Macbeth suscita immediatamente di nuovo le controversie che hanno circondato questo dramma. Miss Ellen Terry e Sir Henry Irving recitarono il Macbeth secondo la teoria che Macbeth fosse un uomo debole e infido e che Lady Macbeth fosse una donna fragile e aggrappante. Una visione alquanto simile di Lady Macbeth è stata, credo, costantemente espressa da una illustre attrice americana. La questione, come comunemente formulata, è insomma la questione se Macbeth fosse davvero maschile, e in secondo luogo se Lady Macbeth non fosse davvero femminile. I vecchi critici presumevano che, poiché Lady Macbeth ovviamente dominava il marito, ella dovesse essere una donna maschile. L’intera inferenza è naturalmente falsa. Le donne maschili possono dominare il Consiglio comunale, ma non dominano mai i loro mariti. Le donne che dominano i loro mariti sono le donne femminili, e io concordo interamente con coloro che ritengono che Lady Macbeth debba essere stata una donna assai femminile. Ma mentre alcuni critici insistono giustamente sul carattere femminile di Lady Macbeth, essi si sforzano di privare Macbeth di quel carattere maschile che ne è ovviamente il corollario. Pensano che Lady Macbeth debba essere un uomo perché domina. E secondo lo stesso idiota principio pensano che Macbeth debba essere una donna o un vigliacco o un decadente o qualcosa di strano perché è dominato. La specie più maschile di uomo è sempre dominata. Come disse una volta un mio amico, molto giustamente, i vigliacchi fisici sono gli unici uomini che non hanno paura delle donne.
La vera verità su Macbeth e su sua moglie è alquanto strana, ma non può essere affermata con troppa forza. In nessun altro luogo di tutte le sue mirabili opere Shakespeare descrisse il vero carattere dei rapporti tra i sessi in modo così equilibrato, o così soddisfacente, come lo descrive qui. L’uomo e la donna non sono mai più normali di quanto siano in questa anormale e orribile storia. Romeo e Giulietta non descrive l’amore meglio di quanto questo descriva il matrimonio. La disputa che intercorre tra Macbeth e sua moglie a proposito dell’assassinio di Duncan è quasi parola per parola una disputa che intercorre a qualsiasi tavola da colazione di periferia a proposito di qualcos’altro. È soltanto questione di mutare «Infermo di proposito, dammi i pugnali» in «Infermo di proposito, dammi i francobolli». Ed è del tutto errato supporre che la donna vada detta maschile o anche solo, in un qualche senso esclusivo, forte. Le forze dei due coniugi differiscono per specie. La donna ha di più quella forza immediata che si chiama operosità. L’uomo ha di più quella forza di riserva che si chiama pigrizia.
Ma l’acuta verità di questa reale relazione è ancora assai più profonda di così. Lady Macbeth mostra una singolare e sbalorditiva specie di magnanimità che è del tutto peculiare alle donne. Cioè, ella prenderà su di sé qualcosa che suo marito non osa fare ma che ella sa che egli desidera fare, e diventerà più feroce di lui per essa. Per lei, come per tutte le anime assai femminili (cioè assai forti), l’egoismo è l’unica cosa acutamente sentita come peccato; ella commetterà qualsiasi delitto purché non lo commetta soltanto per se stessa. Suo marito ha sete del delitto egoisticamente e perciò vagamente, oscuramente e subconsciamente, come un uomo diviene consapevole dei primi accenni di una sete fisica. Ma ella ha sete del delitto altruisticamente, e perciò chiaramente e nettamente, come un uomo percepisce un dovere pubblico verso la società. Ella mette la cosa in parole chiare, con un’accettazione degli estremi. Ella ha quel perfetto e splendido cinismo delle donne che è la cosa più terribile che Dio abbia fatto. Lo dico senza ironia e senza alcun indebito compiacimento del lieve elemento di umorismo.
Se volete sapere quali siano i rapporti permanenti dell’uomo sposato con la donna sposata, non potete leggerlo in alcun luogo più accuratamente che nel piccolo idillio domestico del signore e della signora Macbeth. Di un uomo così maschile e di una donna così femminile non posso credere altro se non che alla fine salvino le loro anime. Macbeth fu forte in ogni senso maschile fino all’ultimissimo momento; si uccise in battaglia. Lady Macbeth fu forte nel senso più propriamente femminile, che è forse un senso più coraggioso; ella si uccise, ma non in battaglia. Come dico, non posso pensare che anime così forti e così elementari non abbiano conservato quelle permanenti possibilità di umiltà e di gratitudine che alla fine collocano l’anima in cielo. Ma ovunque essi siano, sono insieme. Poiché, soli tra tante figure della finzione umana, essi sono realmente sposati.
LA TRAGEDIA DI RE LEAR
LA TRAGEDIA di Re Lear, per alcuni dei suoi elementi forse la più grande di tutte le tragedie shakespeariane, è rappresentata relativamente di rado. È persino possibile nutrire l’oscuro sospetto che essa non sia universalmente letta; col consueto deplorevole risultato: che è universalmente citata. Forse nulla ha fatto tanto per indebolire la più grande delle conquiste inglesi, e per lasciarla esposta a una facile rivolta o a una stanca reazione, quanto l’abominevole abitudine di citare Shakespeare senza leggere Shakespeare. Essa ha incoraggiato tutta la pomposa teatralità che dapprima creò un’idolatria e poi un’iconoclastia; tutta quella florida tradizione in cui i vecchi frequentatori di teatro e gli oratori da dopo-cena parlavano del Bardo o del Cigno dell’Avon, finché divenne relativamente facile, alla fine dell’era vittoriana, per qualcuno come Bernard Shaw proporre un massacro edoardiano di Bardi e quasi insinuare che il cigno fosse un’oca. La maggior parte del guaio veniva da ciò che si chiama «Citazioni Familiari», che erano a malapena persino citazioni rappresentative o auto-esplicative. In quasi tutti i ben noti passi di Shakespeare, citare il passo significa mancare il punto. È quasi superfluo notare quelli che si possono chiamare gli esempi volgari; come nel caso di coloro che dicono che Shakespeare domanda: «Che cosa c’è in un nome?»; il che è piuttosto come dire che Shakespeare afferma che l’assassinio dev’essere compiuto, e sarebbe meglio se fosse compiuto in fretta. L’inferenza popolare è sempre che Shakespeare pensasse che i nomi non contino; laddove non v’era forse uomo sulla terra di Dio meno incline a pensarla così di colui che trasse così magnifici bocconi dalla mandragora e dagli uragani, dai nomi delle Esperidi o di Ercole. L’osservazione non ha alcun senso, tranne che nelle circostanze puramente personali in cui ha la sua pungente forza, sulla bocca di una fanciulla cui è comandato di odiare un uomo che ama, a causa di un nome che le sembra non avere nulla a che fare con lui. Il dramma ora in esame non fa eccezione a questa disastrosa regola. La vecchia signora che si lamentava che la tragedia dell’Amleto fosse così piena di citazioni ne avrebbe trovate quasi altrettante nella tragedia di Re Lear. E avrebbero avuto lo stesso carattere di quelle dell’Amleto o di Romeo e Giulietta: che coloro i quali tralasciano il contesto tralasciano in realtà la concezione. Esse hanno un misterioso potere di rendere il mondo stanco di poche parole fisse e sconnesse, e tuttavia di lasciare il mondo interamente ignaro del reale significato di quelle parole.
Thus, in the play of King Lear, there are certain words which everybody has heard hundreds of times, in connections either intentionally or unintentionally absurd. We have all read or heard of somebody saying, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” Somehow the very words sound as if they were mouthed by some tipsy actor or silly and senile person in a comic novel. I do not know why these particular words, as words, should be selected for citation. Shakespeare was a casual writer; he was often especially careless about metaphors, careless about making them and careless about mixing them. There is nothing particularly notable about this particular metaphor of the tooth; it might just as well have been a wolf’s tooth or a tiger’s tooth. The lines quoted only become remarkable when we read them with the rest of the scene, and with a very much more remarkable passage, which is never quoted at all. The whole point of Lear’s remark is that, when buffeted by the first insult of Goneril, he breaks forth into a blasting bodily curse upon the woman, praying first that she may have no children, then that she may have horrible and unnatural children, that she may give birth to a monstrosity, that she may feel how, etc. Without that terrible implication, the serpent is entirely harmless and his teeth are drawn. I cannot imagine why only the weakest lines in the speech are everlastingly repeated, and the strongest lines in it are never mentioned at all.
A man might well harden into the horrid suspicion that most people have hardly read the play at all, when he remembers how many things there are in it that are not repeated, and yet would certainly be remembered. There are things in it that no man who has read them can ever forget. Amid all the thunders of the storm, it comes like a new clap of thunder, when the thought first crosses the mad king’s mind that he must not complain of wind and storm and lightning, because they are not his daughters. “I never gave you kingdoms, called you children.” And I imagine that the great imaginative invention of the English, the thing called Nonsense, never rose to such a height and sublimity of unreason and horror, as when the Fool juggles with time and space and tomorrow and yesterday, as he says soberly at the end of his rant: “This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.” This is one of the Shakespearian shocks or blows that take the breath away. But in the same scene of the storm and the desolate wandering, there is another example of the sort of thing I mean in the matter of quotation. It is not so strong an example, because the words are very beautiful in themselves; and have often been applied beautifully to pathetic human circumstances not unworthy of them. Nevertheless, they are something not only superior, but quite startlingly different, in the circumstances in which they really stand. We have all of us heard a hundred times that some unlucky law-breaker, or more or less pardonable profligate, was “more sinned against than sinning”. But the words thus used have not a hundredth part of the point and power of the words as used by Lear. The point of the passage is that he himself challenges the cosmic powers to a complete examination; that he finds in his despair a sort of dizzy detachment of the intellect, and strikes the balance to his own case with a kind of insane impartiality. Regarding the storm that rages round him as a universal rending and uprooting of everything, something that will pluck out the roots of all things, even the darkest and foulest roots of the heart of man deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, he affirms in the face of the most appalling self-knowledge, clear and blasting as the lightning, that his sufferings must still be greater than his sins. It is possibly the most tremendous thing a man ever said; whether or no any man had the right to say it. It would be hard to beat it even in the Book of Job. And it does weaken the particular strength of it that it should be used, however sympathetically, as a cheerful and charitable guess about the weaknesses of other people.
There are certain abstractions very strong in Shakespeare’s mind, without which his plays are much misunderstood by modern people, who look to them for nothing whatever except realistic details about individuals. For instance, there runs through the whole play of King Lear, as there runs through the whole play of Richard the Second, an abstraction which was an actuality of awful vividness to the man of Shakespeare’s time; the idea of the King. Under the name of Divine Right, a very unlucky name, it was mixed up with Parliamentary and sectarian quarrels which afterwards altogether dwarfed and diminished its dignity. But Divine Right was originally much more human than that. It resolved itself roughly into this; that there are three forms in which men can accept the idea of justice or the authority of the commonwealth; in the form of an assembly, in the form of a document, or in the form of a man. King Lear is a man; but he is or has been a sacramental or sacred man; and that is why he can be a desecrated man. Even those who prefer to be governed by the scroll of the law, or by the assembly of the tribe, must understand that men have wished, and may again wish, to be governed by a man; and that where this wish has existed the man does become, not indeed divine, but certainly different. It is not an accident that Lear is a king as well as a father, and that Goneril and Regan are not only daughters but traitors. Treason, or what is felt as treason, does break the heart of the world; and it has seldom been so nearly broken as here.
THE EVERLASTING NIGHTS
No one has any business with the Arabian Nights who objects to bulk in literature. It is a curious thing which may be noticed by all literary critics, that literature is the only thing in which bulk is considered a defect. The truth is, of course, that size is an element of value in literature. If the quality be really ascertained, the amount, even if indefinitely increased, becomes a merit. A man would as soon think of saying that the field was over-crowded with flowers, that the sky had a surplus population of stars, as of saying that there were too many good stories. The Arabian Nights is a collection of extraordinarily good stories, and while the modern aesthetic critic will probably find the book too long, the person with a taste for literature will find it too short. Surely the greatest compliment we can pay to it or any other book is to find it too short. This defect is the highest of all possible perfections.
Così, nel dramma di Re Lear, vi sono certe parole che tutti hanno udito centinaia di volte, in nessi o intenzionalmente o involontariamente assurdi. Tutti abbiamo letto o sentito di qualcuno che diceva: «Quanto più affilato del dente di un serpente è avere un figlio ingrato». In qualche modo quelle stesse parole suonano come se fossero declamate da qualche attore ubriaco o da una persona sciocca e senile in un romanzo comico. Non so perché queste particolari parole, in quanto parole, debbano essere scelte per la citazione. Shakespeare era uno scrittore trascurato; era spesso particolarmente incurante riguardo alle metafore, incurante nel farle e incurante nel mescolarle. Non c’è nulla di particolarmente notevole in questa particolare metafora del dente; avrebbe potuto benissimo essere il dente di un lupo o il dente di una tigre. I versi citati diventano notevoli soltanto quando li leggiamo con il resto della scena, e con un passo assai più notevole, che non viene mai citato affatto. L’intero punto dell’osservazione di Lear è che, quando è percosso dal primo affronto di Goneril, egli prorompe in una fulminante maledizione corporale contro la donna, pregando dapprima che ella non abbia figli, poi che ella abbia figli orribili e innaturali, che ella dia alla luce una mostruosità, che ella senta come, eccetera. Senza quella terribile implicazione, il serpente è del tutto innocuo e i suoi denti sono strappati. Non riesco a immaginare perché soltanto i versi più deboli del discorso siano eternamente ripetuti, e i versi più forti in esso non siano mai menzionati affatto.
Un uomo potrebbe bene indurirsi nell’orrido sospetto che la maggior parte delle persone abbia a malapena letto il dramma, quando ricorda quante cose vi sono in esso che non vengono ripetute, eppure sarebbero certamente ricordate. Vi sono cose in esso che nessun uomo che le abbia lette può mai dimenticare. In mezzo a tutti i tuoni della tempesta, giunge come un nuovo scoppio di tuono, quando il pensiero attraversa per la prima volta la mente del folle re che egli non deve lamentarsi del vento e della tempesta e del fulmine, perché essi non sono le sue figlie. «Non vi diedi mai regni, non vi chiamai figli». E immagino che la grande invenzione immaginativa degli inglesi, la cosa chiamata Nonsenso, non si sia mai innalzata a tale altezza e sublimità di irragionevolezza e di orrore, come quando il Matto gioca con il tempo e con lo spazio e con il domani e con l’ieri, mentre dice pacatamente alla fine della sua tirata: «Questa profezia la farà Merlino; poiché io vivo prima del suo tempo». Questo è uno degli shock o dei colpi shakespeariani che tolgono il fiato. Ma nella stessa scena della tempesta e del desolato errare, vi è un altro esempio del genere di cosa che intendo in fatto di citazione. Non è un esempio così forte, perché le parole sono assai belle in se stesse; e sono state spesso applicate splendidamente a patetiche circostanze umane non indegne di esse. Nondimeno, esse sono qualcosa non solo di superiore, ma di sorprendentemente diverso, nelle circostanze in cui realmente si trovano. Tutti noi abbiamo udito un centinaio di volte che qualche sventurato trasgressore della legge, o qualche più o meno perdonabile dissoluto, era «più peccato contro che peccatore». Ma le parole così usate non hanno la centesima parte del punto e della potenza delle parole quali usate da Lear. Il punto del passo è che egli stesso sfida i poteri cosmici a un completo esame; che trova nella sua disperazione una sorta di vertiginoso distacco dell’intelletto, e chiude il bilancio del proprio caso con una specie di folle imparzialità. Considerando la tempesta che infuria intorno a lui come un universale squarciamento e sradicamento di ogni cosa, qualcosa che strapperà le radici di tutte le cose, persino le più oscure e sudice radici del cuore dell’uomo, ingannevole più di ogni cosa e disperatamente malvagio, egli afferma, di fronte alla più spaventosa conoscenza di sé, chiara e fulminante come il fulmine, che le sue sofferenze devono comunque essere maggiori dei suoi peccati. È forse la cosa più tremenda che un uomo abbia mai detto; che un uomo ne avesse o no il diritto. Sarebbe difficile superarla anche nel Libro di Giobbe. E indebolisce in effetti la particolare forza di essa il fatto che sia usata, per quanto con simpatia, come una lieta e caritatevole congettura sulle debolezze altrui.
Vi sono certe astrazioni assai forti nella mente di Shakespeare, senza le quali i suoi drammi vengono grandemente fraintesi dalle persone moderne, che non vi cercano nient’altro se non dettagli realistici sugli individui. Per esempio, attraverso l’intero dramma di Re Lear, come attraverso l’intero dramma di Riccardo II, corre un’astrazione che era un’attualità di terribile vividezza per l’uomo del tempo di Shakespeare: l’idea del Re. Sotto il nome di Diritto Divino, nome assai sventurato, essa fu mescolata a contese parlamentari e settarie che in seguito ne rimpicciolirono e ne diminuirono del tutto la dignità. Ma il Diritto Divino era in origine assai più umano di così. Si risolveva grossolanamente in questo: che vi sono tre forme nelle quali gli uomini possono accettare l’idea della giustizia o l’autorità dello Stato; nella forma di un’assemblea, nella forma di un documento, o nella forma di un uomo. Re Lear è un uomo; ma è, o è stato, un uomo sacramentale o sacro; ed è per questo che può essere un uomo profanato. Anche coloro che preferiscono essere governati dal rotolo della legge, o dall’assemblea della tribù, devono comprendere che gli uomini hanno desiderato, e possono di nuovo desiderare, di essere governati da un uomo; e che dove questo desiderio è esistito l’uomo diviene, non certo divino, ma certamente diverso. Non è un caso che Lear sia un re oltre che un padre, e che Goneril e Regan non siano soltanto figlie ma traditrici. Il tradimento, o ciò che è sentito come tradimento, spezza davvero il cuore del mondo; e raramente è stato così quasi spezzato come qui.
LE NOTTI ETERNE
Nessuno ha nulla a che fare con Le mille e una notte se ha da obiettare alla mole in letteratura. È una cosa curiosa, che può essere notata da tutti i critici letterari, che la letteratura è l’unica cosa in cui la mole è considerata un difetto. La verità è, naturalmente, che la dimensione è un elemento di valore in letteratura. Se la qualità è realmente accertata, la quantità, anche se accresciuta indefinitamente, diventa un merito. A un uomo verrebbe in mente di dire che il campo fosse sovraffollato di fiori, che il cielo avesse una popolazione in eccesso di stelle, così come di dire che vi fossero troppe belle storie. Le mille e una notte sono una raccolta di storie straordinariamente belle, e mentre il moderno critico estetico troverà probabilmente il libro troppo lungo, la persona con gusto per la letteratura lo troverà troppo corto. Sicuramente il più grande complimento che possiamo fare a esso o a qualsiasi altro libro è trovarlo troppo corto. Questo difetto è la più alta di tutte le perfezioni possibili.
Now length in the case of the Arabian Nights is not a mere material accident; it is one of the essential qualities, one of the essential virtues of the book. A short Arabian Nights is as unthinkable as a neat wilderness or a snug cathedral. The whole plan of the book is one vast conspiracy to entrap the reader into a condition of everlasting attention. By a supreme stroke of genius the compiler expressed this in the primary framework and outline. He made the teller of the stories a person inspired to prolong the stories infinitely by the devouring desire of life. It made the wish for an everlasting story one with the wish for an everlasting earthly existence. He made Scheherezade suddenly paralyze the tyrant when the sword was uplifted by a vision of all the stories that remained to be told in the world. She lured him into the golden and enchanted chamber of the first story and then the work was done. He could not get away from the puzzling and alluring sequence of that chain of tales, that endless series of delightful mantraps. Rooms within rooms opened their tempting and tantalizing doors, stories within stories promised a complicated and even confusing pleasure. The tyrant can sway kingdoms, and command multitudes, but he cannot discover exactly what happened to a fabulous prince or princess unless he asks for it. He has to wait, almost to fawn upon a wretched slave for the fag-end of an old tale. Never in any other book, perhaps, has such a splendid tribute been offered to the pride and omnipotence of art.
This is the real idea behind the Arabian Nights. The richness which first strikes the imagination in reading it is a mere symbol. The richness of gold, silver and jewels is a mere figure and representation of that which is the essential idea, the deep and enduring richness of life. The preciousness of emerald and amethyst and sandalwood is only the parable and expression of the preciousness of stones, dust, and dogs running in the streets. In the Arabian Nights everything has a story to tell. Three men come together; one is leading a gazelle, another a dog, another a mule. But the gazelle is an enchanted human being, the dog is a transformed brother, the mule is a man in unhuman shape. There is no traveller so dusty and commonplace that he may not have stories to tell of the terrible continents that lie upon the borderland of the world. There is no beggar so bent and abject that he may not have possession of a talisman which gives him power over the palaces and temples of princes. The possibilities of life are not to be counted. That is the profoundly practical moral buried in the Arabian Nights.
In our early Biblical lessons we were told that the Eastern teacher sat down to teach. There are not, perhaps, many points of resemblance between two such products of Oriental literature as The Book of Job and the Arabian Nights. But there is this in common between them, that we feel that both must have been narrated by somebody who was sitting down, while Ulysses the typical Greek, was toiling with oar and rudder to discover new isles and peninsulas, Job, the typical Jew, was reviewing the whole of heaven and earth while sitting on a dust-heap. Similarly, the Sultan of the Indies heard the tales of the four quarters of the earth while sitting on a cushion. The essential point, the essential lesson of these Oriental literatures is the clear and most moral lesson of idleness. Idleness is not a vice; in the old Chaucerian form of ‘idlesse’ it is a pleasure, and almost a virtue. Its true name is leisure. It is not a trifling with unimportant things, but a vision of all the innumerable important things in the universe which are in themselves even more important than bread and cheese.
Here again, therefore, we come near to one of the essential ideas which give their perennial charm to the Arabian Nights. It is the idea that idleness is not an empty thing. Idleness can be, and should be a particularly full thing, rich as it is in the Arabian Nights with invaluable jewels and incalculable stories. Idleness, or leisure, as the Eastern chronicler would probably prefer to call it, is indeed our opportunity of seeing the vision of all things, our rural audience for hearing, as the Sultan of the Indies heard them, the stories of all created things. In that hour, if we know how to use it, the tree tells its story to us, the stone in the road recites its memoirs, the lamp-post and the paling expatiate on their autobiographies. For as the most hideous nightmare in the world is an empty leisure, so the most enduring pleasure is a full leisure. We can defend ourselves, even on the Day of Judgment, if our work has been useless, with pleas of opportunity, competition and fulness of days.
AESOP’S FABLES
AESOP EMBODIES an epigram not uncommon in human history; his fame is all the more deserved because he never deserved it. The firm foundations of common sense, the shrewd shots of uncommon sense, that characterize all the Fables, belong not to him but to humanity. In the earliest human history, whatever is authentic is universal; and whatever is universal is anonymous. In such cases there is always some central man who had first the trouble of collecting these stories, and afterwards the fame of creating them. He had the fame; and, on the whole, he earned the fame. There must have been something great and human, something of the human future and the human past, in such a man; even if he only used it to rob the past or deceive the future. The story of Arthur may have been really connected with the most fighting Christianity of falling Rome or with the most heathen traditions hidden in the hills of Wales. But the word ‘Mappe’ or ‘Malory’ will always mean King Arthur; even though we find older and better origins than the Mabinogian; or write later and worse versions than the ‘Idylls of the King.’ The nursery fairy-tales may have come out of Asia with the Indo-European race, now fortunately extinct; they may have been invented by some fine French lady or gentlemen like Perrault: they may possibly even be what they profess to be. But we shall always call the best selection of such tales, ‘Grimm’s Tales’; simply because it is the best collection.
Ora la lunghezza, nel caso delle Mille e una notte, non è un mero accidente materiale; è una delle qualità essenziali, una delle virtù essenziali del libro. Delle Mille e una notte in forma breve sono tanto impensabili quanto una landa ordinata o una cattedrale accogliente. L’intero disegno del libro è una vasta cospirazione per irretire il lettore in una condizione di attenzione perpetua. Con un supremo colpo di genio il compilatore lo espresse nella cornice e nella trama primaria. Fece della narratrice delle storie una persona ispirata a prolungarle all’infinito dal divorante desiderio di vivere. Fece del desiderio di una storia senza fine tutt’uno col desiderio di un’esistenza terrena senza fine. Fece sì che Shahrazad paralizzasse d’improvviso il tiranno, quando la spada era già levata, con la visione di tutte le storie che restavano da raccontare al mondo. Lo attirò nella camera aurea e incantata della prima storia, e allora l’opera fu compiuta. Egli non poté più sottrarsi alla sconcertante e seducente sequenza di quella catena di racconti, quella serie infinita di deliziose trappole. Stanze dentro stanze aprivano le loro porte tentatrici e provocanti, storie dentro storie promettevano un piacere complicato e persino sconcertante. Il tiranno può governare regni e comandare moltitudini, ma non può scoprire esattamente che cosa accadde a un favoloso principe o principessa se non lo chiede. Deve attendere, quasi adulare un misero schiavo per l’ultimo brandello di un vecchio racconto. Mai in nessun altro libro, forse, è stato offerto un così splendido tributo all’orgoglio e all’onnipotenza dell’arte.
Questa è la vera idea che sta dietro le Mille e una notte. La ricchezza che per prima colpisce l’immaginazione nel leggerle è un mero simbolo. La ricchezza d’oro, argento e gioielli è una mera figura e rappresentazione di ciò che è l’idea essenziale, la profonda e duratura ricchezza della vita. La preziosità dello smeraldo, dell’ametista e del sandalo è soltanto la parabola e l’espressione della preziosità delle pietre, della polvere e dei cani che corrono per le strade. Nelle Mille e una notte ogni cosa ha una storia da raccontare. Tre uomini s’incontrano; uno conduce una gazzella, un altro un cane, un altro un mulo. Ma la gazzella è un essere umano incantato, il cane è un fratello trasformato, il mulo è un uomo in forma non umana. Non c’è viaggiatore tanto polveroso e ordinario da non poter narrare storie dei terribili continenti che giacciono ai confini del mondo. Non c’è mendicante tanto ricurvo e abietto da non poter possedere un talismano che gli dia potere sui palazzi e i templi dei principi. Le possibilità della vita non si possono contare. Questa è la morale profondamente pratica sepolta nelle Mille e una notte.
Nelle nostre prime lezioni bibliche ci fu detto che il maestro orientale si sedeva per insegnare. Non vi sono, forse, molti punti di somiglianza tra due prodotti della letteratura orientale come il Libro di Giobbe e le Mille e una notte. Ma hanno questo in comune, che sentiamo come entrambi debbano essere stati narrati da qualcuno che stava seduto: mentre Ulisse, il greco tipico, si affannava con remo e timone a scoprire nuove isole e penisole, Giobbe, l’ebreo tipico, passava in rassegna l’intero cielo e terra stando seduto su un mucchio di polvere. Similmente, il Sultano delle Indie ascoltava i racconti dei quattro angoli della terra stando seduto su un cuscino. Il punto essenziale, la lezione essenziale di queste letterature orientali è la chiara e assai morale lezione dell’ozio. L’ozio non è un vizio; nell’antica forma chauceriana di «idlesse» è un piacere, e quasi una virtù. Il suo vero nome è agio. Non è un baloccarsi con cose senza importanza, ma una visione di tutte le innumerevoli cose importanti dell’universo che sono in se stesse persino più importanti del pane e del formaggio.
Anche qui, dunque, ci accostiamo a una delle idee essenziali che conferiscono il loro perenne fascino alle Mille e una notte. È l’idea che l’ozio non sia una cosa vuota. L’ozio può essere, e dovrebbe essere, una cosa particolarmente piena, ricca com’è nelle Mille e una notte di gioielli inestimabili e di storie incalcolabili. L’ozio, o l’agio, come il cronista orientale preferirebbe probabilmente chiamarlo, è davvero la nostra occasione di vedere la visione di tutte le cose, la nostra rurale platea per udire, come le udiva il Sultano delle Indie, le storie di tutte le cose create. In quell’ora, se sappiamo usarla, l’albero ci racconta la sua storia, la pietra sulla strada recita le sue memorie, il lampione e lo steccato si dilungano sulle loro autobiografie. Poiché come il più orrendo incubo del mondo è un ozio vuoto, così il piacere più duraturo è un ozio pieno. Possiamo difenderci, persino nel Giorno del Giudizio, se il nostro lavoro è stato inutile, con la scusa dell’occasione, della concorrenza e della pienezza dei giorni.
LE FAVOLE DI ESOPO
ESOPO incarna un epigramma non raro nella storia umana; la sua fama è tanto più meritata in quanto egli non la meritò mai. Le solide fondamenta del senso comune, gli acuti colpi di un senso non comune, che caratterizzano tutte le Favole, non appartengono a lui bensì all’umanità. Nella più antica storia umana, tutto ciò che è autentico è universale; e tutto ciò che è universale è anonimo. In tali casi vi è sempre un uomo centrale che ebbe prima la fatica di raccogliere queste storie, e poi la fama di averle create. Egli ebbe la fama; e, nel complesso, se la guadagnò. Doveva esserci qualcosa di grande e di umano, qualcosa dell’avvenire umano e del passato umano, in un uomo simile; anche se se ne servì solo per depredare il passato o ingannare il futuro. La storia di Artù può essere stata realmente connessa col più battagliero cristianesimo della Roma in declino, oppure con le tradizioni più pagane celate tra i colli del Galles. Ma la parola «Mappe» o «Malory» significherà sempre re Artù; anche se troviamo origini più antiche e migliori del Mabinogion, o scriviamo versioni più tarde e peggiori degli «Idilli del Re». Le fiabe della culla possono essere giunte dall’Asia con la razza indoeuropea, ora fortunatamente estinta; possono essere state inventate da qualche raffinata dama o gentiluomo francese come Perrault; possono persino essere ciò che dichiarano di essere. Ma chiameremo sempre la migliore scelta di tali racconti «Le fiabe di Grimm»; semplicemente perché è la migliore raccolta.
The historical Aesop, in so far as he was historical, would seem to have been a Phrygian slave, or at least one not to be specially and symbolically adorned with the Phrygian cap of liberty. He lived, if he did live, about the sixth century before Christ, in the time of that Croesus whose story we love and suspect like everything else in Herodotus. There are also stories of deformity of feature and a ready ribaldry of tongue; stories which (as the celebrated Cardinal said) explain, though they do not excuse, his having been hurled over a high precipice at Delphi. It is for those who read the Fables to judge whether he was really thrown over the cliff for being ugly and offensive, or rather for being highly moral and correct. But there is no kind of doubt that the general legend of him may justly rank him with a race too easily forgotten in our modern comparisons; the race of the great philosophic slaves. Aesop may have been a fiction like Uncle Remus; he was also, like Uncle Remus, a fact. It is a fact that slaves in the old world could be worshipped like Aesop, or loved like Uncle Remus. It is odd to note that both the great slaves told their best stories about beasts and birds.
But whatever be fairly due to Aesop, the human tradition called Fables is not due to him. This had gone on long before any sarcastic freedman from Phrygia had or had not been flung off a precipice; this has remained long after. It is to our advantage, indeed, to realize the distinction; because it makes Aesop more obviously effective than any other fabulist. Grimm’s Tales, glorious as they are, were collected by two German students; at least we know more about them than we know about a Phrygian slave. The truth is, of course, that Aesop’s Fables are not Aesop’s fables, any more than Grimm’s Fairy-Tales were ever Grimm’s fairy-tales. But the fable and the fairy-tale are things utterly distinct. There are many elements of difference; but the plainest is plain enough. There can be no good fable with human beings in it. There can be no good fairy-tale without them.
Aesop, or Babrius (or whatever his name was), understood that, for a fable, all the persons must be impersonal. They must be like abstractions in algebra, or like pieces in chess. The lion must always be stronger than the wolf, just as four is always double of two. The fox in a fable must move crooked, as the knight in chess must move crooked. The sheep in a fable must march on, as the pawn in chess must march on. The fable must not allow for the crooked captures of the pawn; it must not allow for what Balzac called “the revolt of a sheep.” The fairy-tale, on the other hand, absolutely revolves on the pivot of human personality. If no hero were there to fight the dragons, we should not even know that they were dragons. If no adventurer were cast on the undiscovered island—it would remain undiscovered. If the miller’s third son does not find the enchanted garden where the seven princesses stand white and frozen— why then, they will remain white and frozen and enchanted. If there is no personal prince to find the Sleeping Beauty she will simply sleep. Fables repose upon quite the opposite idea: that everything is itself, and will in any case speak for itself. The wolf will be always selfish; the fox will be always foxy. Something of the same sort may have been meant by the animal worship, in which Egyptian and Indian and many other great people have combined. Men do not, I think, love beetles or cats or crocodiles with a wholly personal love; they salute them as expressions of that abstract and anonymous energy in nature which to any one is awful, and to an atheist must be frightful. So in all the fables that are or are not Aesop’s all the animal forces drive like inanimate forces, like great rivers or growing trees. It is the limit and the loss of all such things that they cannot be anything but themselves; it is their tragedy that they could not lose their souls.
This is the immortal justification of the Fable; that we could not teach the plainest truths so simply without turning men into chessmen. We cannot talk of such simple things without using animals that do not talk at all. Suppose, for a moment, that you turn the wolf into a selfish baron, or the fox into a foxy diplomatist, you will at once remember that even barons are human, you will be unable to forget that even diplomatists are men. You will always be looking for that accidental good humour that should go with the brutality of any brutal man; for that allowance for all delicate things, including virtue, that should exist in any good diplomatist. Once put a thing on two legs instead of four and pluck it of feathers and you cannot help asking for a human being, either heroic, as in the fairy-tales, or unheroic, as in the modern novels.
But by using animals in this austere and arbitrary style as they are used on the shields of heraldry or the hieroglyphics of the ancients, men have really succeeded in handing down those tremendous truths that are called truisms. If the chivalric lion be red and rampant, it is rigidly red and rampant; if the sacred ibis stands anywhere on one leg, it stands on one leg for ever. In this language, like a large animal alphabet, are written some of the first philosophic certainties of men. As the child learns A for Ass or B for Bull or C for Cow, so man has learnt here to connect the simpler and stronger creatures with the simpler and stronger truths. That a flowing stream cannot befoul its own fountain, and that any one who says it does is a tyrant and a liar; that a mouse is too weak to fight a lion, but too strong for the cords that can hold a lion; that a fox who gets most out of a flat dish may easily get least out of a deep dish; that the crow whom the gods forbid to sing, the gods nevertheless provide with cheese; that when the goat insults from a mountain-top it is not the goat that insults, but the mountain; all these are deep truths deeply graven on the rocks wherever men have passed. It matters nothing how old they are, or how new; they are the alphabet of humanity, which like so many forms of primitive picture-writing employs any living symbol in preference to man. These ancient and universal tales are all of animals; as the latest discoveries in the oldest prehistoric caverns are all of animals. Man, in his simpler stories, always felt that he himself was something too mysterious to be drawn. But the legend he carved under these cruder symbols was everywhere the same; and whether fables began with Aesop or began with Adam, whether they were German and medieval as Reynard the Fox, or as French and Renaissance as La Fontaine, the upshot is everywhere essentially the same; that pride goes before a fall; and that there is such a thing as being too clever by half. You will not find any other legend but this written upon the rocks by any hand of man. There is every type and time of fable; but there is only one moral to the fable; because there is only one moral to everything.
L’Esopo storico, nella misura in cui fu storico, sembrerebbe essere stato uno schiavo frigio, o quanto meno uno da non adornare in modo speciale e simbolico col berretto frigio della libertà. Visse, se davvero visse, intorno al sesto secolo prima di Cristo, al tempo di quel Creso la cui storia amiamo e sospettiamo come ogni altra cosa in Erodoto. Vi sono anche racconti di deformità dei lineamenti e di una pronta scurrilità di lingua; racconti che (come disse il celebre Cardinale) spiegano, benché non giustifichino, il fatto che egli fu scagliato giù da un alto precipizio a Delfi. Spetta a chi legge le Favole giudicare se davvero fu gettato dalla rupe per essere brutto e offensivo, oppure piuttosto per essere altamente morale e corretto. Ma non v’è dubbio alcuno che la leggenda generale intorno a lui possa a buon diritto annoverarlo in una stirpe troppo facilmente dimenticata nei nostri raffronti moderni; la stirpe dei grandi schiavi filosofi. Esopo può essere stato una finzione come lo Zio Remo; fu anche, come lo Zio Remo, un fatto. È un fatto che gli schiavi nel mondo antico potevano essere venerati come Esopo, o amati come lo Zio Remo. È singolare notare che entrambi i grandi schiavi narrarono le loro migliori storie di bestie e uccelli.
Ma qualunque cosa spetti giustamente a Esopo, la tradizione umana chiamata Favola non spetta a lui. Essa era in corso molto prima che qualche sarcastico liberto della Frigia fosse o non fosse stato scagliato da un precipizio; essa è rimasta molto tempo dopo. Ci giova, in verità, cogliere la distinzione; perché rende Esopo più manifestamente efficace di ogni altro favolista. Le Fiabe dei Grimm, gloriose come sono, furono raccolte da due studenti tedeschi; almeno di loro sappiamo più di quanto sappiamo di uno schiavo frigio. La verità è, naturalmente, che le Favole di Esopo non sono le favole di Esopo, non più di quanto le Fiabe dei Grimm siano mai state le fiabe dei Grimm. Ma la favola e la fiaba sono cose del tutto distinte. Vi sono molti elementi di differenza; ma il più lampante è abbastanza chiaro. Non può esservi buona favola con esseri umani dentro. Non può esservi buona fiaba senza di essi.
Esopo, o Babrio (o comunque si chiamasse), comprese che, in una favola, tutti i personaggi devono essere impersonali. Devono essere come astrazioni nell’algebra, o come pezzi negli scacchi. Il leone deve sempre essere più forte del lupo, così come quattro è sempre il doppio di due. La volpe in una favola deve muoversi di traverso, come l’alfiere negli scacchi deve muoversi di traverso. La pecora in una favola deve marciare avanti, come il pedone negli scacchi deve marciare avanti. La favola non deve ammettere le catture oblique del pedone; non deve ammettere ciò che Balzac chiamava «la rivolta di una pecora». La fiaba, d’altra parte, ruota assolutamente sul perno della personalità umana. Se non vi fosse un eroe a combattere i draghi, non sapremmo neppure che sono draghi. Se nessun avventuriero fosse gettato sull’isola inesplorata… essa rimarrebbe inesplorata. Se il terzo figlio del mugnaio non trova il giardino incantato dove le sette principesse stanno bianche e gelate… ebbene, allora rimarranno bianche e gelate e incantate. Se non c’è un principe in persona a trovare la Bella Addormentata, essa semplicemente dormirà. Le favole riposano sull’idea del tutto opposta: che ogni cosa è sé stessa, e in ogni caso parlerà per sé stessa. Il lupo sarà sempre egoista; la volpe sarà sempre volpina. Qualcosa di simile può essere stato inteso dal culto degli animali, in cui Egizi e Indiani e molti altri grandi popoli si sono accordati. Gli uomini non amano, credo, gli scarabei o i gatti o i coccodrilli d’un amore del tutto personale; li salutano come espressioni di quell’energia astratta e anonima della natura che a chiunque è tremenda, e a un ateo deve risultare spaventosa. Così in tutte le favole che sono o non sono di Esopo tutte le forze animali agiscono come forze inanimate, come grandi fiumi o alberi che crescono. È il limite e la perdita di tutte queste cose che non possono essere altro che sé stesse; è la loro tragedia che non potrebbero perdere la propria anima.
Questa è l’immortale giustificazione della Favola; che non potremmo insegnare le verità più semplici così semplicemente senza trasformare gli uomini in pezzi degli scacchi. Non possiamo parlare di cose così semplici senza usare animali che non parlano affatto. Supponete, per un momento, di trasformare il lupo in un barone egoista, o la volpe in un diplomatico volpino: vi ricorderete subito che perfino i baroni sono umani, non riuscirete a dimenticare che perfino i diplomatici sono uomini. Cercherete sempre quel casuale buonumore che dovrebbe accompagnarsi alla brutalità di ogni uomo brutale; quell’indulgenza per tutte le cose delicate, virtù compresa, che dovrebbe esistere in ogni buon diplomatico. Mettete una cosa su due gambe invece che su quattro e spennatela delle piume e non potrete fare a meno di reclamare un essere umano, o eroico, come nelle fiabe, o non eroico, come nei romanzi moderni.
Ma usando gli animali in questo stile austero e arbitrario come sono usati sugli scudi dell’araldica o nei geroglifici degli antichi, gli uomini sono davvero riusciti a tramandare quelle tremende verità che si chiamano truismi. Se il leone cavalleresco è rosso e rampante, è rigidamente rosso e rampante; se il sacro ibis sta in qualche luogo su una gamba sola, sta su una gamba sola per sempre. In questa lingua, come un grande alfabeto animale, sono scritte alcune delle prime certezze filosofiche degli uomini. Come il bambino impara A per Asino o B per Bue o C per Cavallo, così l’uomo ha imparato qui a collegare le creature più semplici e più forti con le verità più semplici e più forti. Che un ruscello che scorre non può insozzare la propria sorgente, e che chiunque dica il contrario è un tiranno e un bugiardo; che un topo è troppo debole per combattere un leone, ma troppo forte per le corde che possono trattenere un leone; che una volpe che ricava di più da un piatto piatto può facilmente ricavare di meno da un piatto fondo; che al corvo cui gli dèi vietano di cantare, gli dèi tuttavia provvedono il formaggio; che quando la capra insulta dalla cima di un monte non è la capra a insultare, ma il monte; tutte queste sono verità profonde profondamente incise nelle rocce ovunque gli uomini siano passati. Non conta nulla quanto siano antiche, o quanto nuove; sono l’alfabeto dell’umanità, che come tante forme di scrittura pittografica primitiva impiega qualsiasi simbolo vivente di preferenza all’uomo. Questi racconti antichi e universali riguardano tutti animali; come le più recenti scoperte nelle più antiche caverne preistoriche riguardano tutte animali. L’uomo, nelle sue storie più semplici, sentì sempre che egli stesso era qualcosa di troppo misterioso per essere raffigurato. Ma la leggenda che scolpiva sotto questi simboli più rozzi era dappertutto la stessa; e sia che le favole abbiano avuto inizio con Esopo o con Adamo, sia che fossero tedesche e medievali come Reynard la Volpe, o francesi e rinascimentali come La Fontaine, la conclusione è dappertutto essenzialmente la stessa; che la superbia precede la caduta; e che esiste una cosa quale l’essere troppo furbi per il proprio bene. Non troverete altra leggenda che questa scritta sulle rocce da mano d’uomo. C’è ogni tipo e tempo di favola; ma c’è una sola morale della favola; perché c’è una sola morale a ogni cosa.
BOTH SIDES OF THE LOOKING-GLASS
WE ALL say comparisons are odious, and I wonder whether any of us know why. In the abstract, comparison is only a way of testing degrees and qualities, like the zoologist who thought it an exact and exhaustive description of a giraffe to say that “he is taller than an elephant, but not so thick”. There is nothing in this to indicate any odium—to suggest that he was cruel to wild elephants or unduly spoiled and petted his giraffes. But when we pass from nature to human nature, comparison does always sound like a depreciation. I think the reason is this: that for some cause, possibly original sin, we have a very weak supply of words of praise as compared with our rich and varied output of terms of abuse. We can call the unpleasant scholar or intellectual a pedant or a prig, but we have no special word for the pleasant sort of scholar or intellectual. We can call the wrong sort of society person a snob, but we have no special name for the right sort of society person. Thus we are driven to the ghastly necessity, for instance, of calling our friends ‘nice’. Fancy calling Dr. Johnson ‘nice’, and Fox ‘nice’, and Nelson ‘nice’. It does not present very vivid or varied portraits.
I have been reading, side by side, two books about men who were both ‘nice’, and whose books were ‘nice’. They were the two great nineteenth-century tellers of tales to children. They were also as flatly contrary to each other at every point as two men could be, but if I go beyond calling them both ‘nice’ and try to compare them or say what they were like, it will quite certainly sound as though I were praising one and blaming the other. This is simply because we cannot vary praise as we vary blame. One of these men was Charles Dodgson, commonly known as Lewis Carroll, a don at Oxford and a very Victorian English clergyman, the other was Hans Christian Andersen, a queer, cranky and visionary Danish peasant, and the author of immortal tales.
When I say that Lewis Carroll was very Victorian, that will sound like a reproach, though it ought to be a compliment as well as a reproach—only it is so much more difficult to find words to fit what was good in Victorian England than what was bad in it. If I say that Dodgson the don was conventional or comfortable or respectable, compared with Andersen the peasant, those words will sound like unfriendly words, but only because there are no friendly words to express the really friendly things that often do go along with conventions and comforts.
It is abominably stupid to call the Victorian Age merely conventional and comfortable, and to forget the fact that it produced a new kind of poetry which was supremely wild and supremely innocent. It was the poetry of pure nonsense, which has never been known in the world before and may never be known again. Lewis Carroll was not the only example: Edward Lear, I think, was a better one; and I would put in a word for the ‘Katawampus’ and other stories of Judge Parry, that children loved at least as much. Lewis Carroll’s letters to children prove that not only did he love children, but that children loved him; nevertheless I believe his intellectual attacks were directed to adults. Everything in Lewis Carroll is part of what he called the Game of Logic; it is very Victorian, by the way, to think of logic as a game. The Victorians had to invent a sort of impossible paradise in which to indulge in good logic: for all serious things they preferred bad logic. This is not paradoxical, or at any rate, it was they who made the paradox. Macaulay and Bagehot and all their teachers taught them that the British Constitution ought to be illogical— they called it being practical. Read the great Reform Bill and then read Alice in Wonderland—you will be struck by the resemblance of Alice in Wonderland. They had to go to fairyland to be logical. Thus I suspect that the very best of Lewis Carroll was not written by a man for children, but by a don for dons. The most brilliant strokes are not only mathematical, but mature. Ten lectures against the heresy of mere Relativity could be based on that one perfect sentence, “I have seen hills compared with which that would be a valley.”
But it may be questioned whether the little girls he wrote for were tortured by relativist scepticism. And, in a way, this is part of the glory of Lewis Carroll. He was not only teaching children to stand on their heads; but he was also teaching dons to stand on their heads. It is a good test of a head to stand on it. When the Victorians wanted a holiday, they made one, a real intellectual holiday. They did create a world which, to me at least, is still a sort of strange home, a secret holiday, a world in which monsters, terrifying in other fairy-tales, were turned into pets. Nothing will deprive them of the glory of it. It was nonsense for nonsense’s sake. If we ask where this magic mirror was found the answer is that it was found among very padded Victorian furniture: in other words, it was due to the historical accident by which Dodgson and Oxford and England were, at that moment, very comfortable and secure. They knew there would be no fighting, except the party system, in which Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle, the battle being much less obvious than the agreement. They knew their England could not see invasion or revolution; they knew it was growing richer by commerce; they did not realize that agriculture was dying, possibly because it was already dead; they had no peasants.
They found their flat contrary in that other great lover of children, whose story is told admirably in The Life of Hans Christian Andersen by Signe Toksvig. Hans Andersen was himself a peasant, and came of what is still a country of peasants. In a thousand ways, Hans Andersen represented the exact opposite of the sheltered don in his cushioned Victorian drawing-room. Hans was open to all the winds that blew, like a peasant on his fields, like a peasant on the European battlefields. He grew up anyhow, full of a sort of pathetic and greedy ambition, such as dons at Oxford do not show. He had experienced all realities, including his own weakness and his own desires. He did a hundred things, idiotic things, which Mr. Dodgson would have found unthinkable; but because he was a peasant he had his compensations. He remained in touch with the enormous tradition of the earth in the matter of mystery and glamour—he did not have to make a new and rather artificial sort of fairy-tale out of triangles and syllogisms.
ENTRAMBI I LATI DELLO SPECCHIO
TUTTI diciamo che i paragoni sono odiosi, e mi chiedo se qualcuno di noi sappia perché. In astratto, il paragone è soltanto un modo di saggiare gradi e qualità, come lo zoologo che riteneva descrizione esatta ed esauriente di una giraffa dire che «è più alta di un elefante, ma non così grossa». Non c’è nulla in questo che indichi alcun odio… che suggerisca che egli fosse crudele con gli elefanti selvatici o viziasse e coccolasse indebitamente le sue giraffe. Ma quando passiamo dalla natura alla natura umana, il paragone suona sempre come un deprezzamento. Credo che la ragione sia questa: che per qualche causa, forse il peccato originale, disponiamo di una scorta assai misera di parole di lode a paragone della nostra ricca e varia produzione di termini di ingiuria. Possiamo chiamare lo studioso o l’intellettuale sgradevole un pedante o un saccente, ma non abbiamo una parola apposita per la specie gradevole di studioso o intellettuale. Possiamo chiamare la persona mondana del tipo sbagliato uno snob, ma non abbiamo un nome apposito per la persona mondana del tipo giusto. Così siamo spinti alla spaventosa necessità, per esempio, di chiamare i nostri amici «carini». Figuratevi chiamare il Dottor Johnson «carino», e Fox «carino», e Nelson «carino». Non presenta ritratti molto vividi o vari.
Ho letto, l’uno accanto all’altro, due libri su uomini che erano entrambi «carini», e i cui libri erano «carini». Erano i due grandi narratori di storie per bambini dell’Ottocento. Erano anche, in ogni punto, tanto piattamente contrari l’uno all’altro quanto due uomini possono esserlo, ma se vado oltre il chiamarli entrambi «carini» e provo a paragonarli o a dire come fossero, suonerà quasi certamente come se lodassi l’uno e biasimassi l’altro. Questo semplicemente perché non possiamo variare la lode come variamo il biasimo. Uno di questi uomini era Charles Dodgson, comunemente noto come Lewis Carroll, un docente a Oxford e un ecclesiastico inglese oltremodo vittoriano, l’altro era Hans Christian Andersen, uno strano, bizzoso e visionario contadino danese, e l’autore di racconti immortali.
Quando dico che Lewis Carroll era oltremodo vittoriano, ciò suonerà come un rimprovero, benché dovrebbe essere un complimento tanto quanto un rimprovero… senonché è tanto più difficile trovare parole che si adattino a ciò che di buono vi era nell’Inghilterra vittoriana che a ciò che vi era di cattivo. Se dico che Dodgson il docente era convenzionale o comodo o rispettabile, a paragone di Andersen il contadino, quelle parole suoneranno come parole ostili, ma solo perché non ci sono parole amichevoli per esprimere le cose davvero amichevoli che spesso si accompagnano alle convenzioni e alle comodità.
È abominevolmente sciocco chiamare l’Età Vittoriana semplicemente convenzionale e comoda, e dimenticare il fatto che essa produsse un nuovo genere di poesia supremamente selvaggio e supremamente innocente. Era la poesia del puro nonsenso, che non era mai stata conosciuta prima al mondo e forse non sarà mai più conosciuta. Lewis Carroll non fu l’unico esempio: Edward Lear, credo, ne fu uno migliore; e vorrei spendere una parola per il «Katawampus» e le altre storie del giudice Parry, che i bambini amarono almeno altrettanto. Le lettere di Lewis Carroll ai bambini provano che non solo egli amava i bambini, ma che i bambini amavano lui; nondimeno credo che i suoi attacchi intellettuali fossero rivolti agli adulti. Tutto in Lewis Carroll è parte di ciò che egli chiamava il Gioco della Logica; è oltremodo vittoriano, tra parentesi, pensare alla logica come a un gioco. I Vittoriani dovettero inventare una sorta di paradiso impossibile in cui indulgere alla buona logica: per tutte le cose serie preferivano la cattiva logica. Questo non è paradossale, o comunque furono loro a creare il paradosso. Macaulay e Bagehot e tutti i loro maestri insegnarono loro che la Costituzione britannica doveva essere illogica… la chiamavano essere pratici. Leggete la grande Legge di Riforma e poi leggete Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie… sarete colpiti dalla somiglianza di Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie. Dovevano andare nel paese delle fate per essere logici. Sospetto dunque che il meglio di Lewis Carroll non fu scritto da un uomo per i bambini, ma da un docente per i docenti. I tratti più brillanti non sono solo matematici, ma maturi. Dieci lezioni contro l’eresia della mera Relatività potrebbero fondarsi su quell’unica perfetta frase: «Ho visto colline a paragone delle quali quella sarebbe una valle».
Ma si può dubitare che le bambine per cui scriveva fossero tormentate dallo scetticismo relativista. E, in un certo senso, questo fa parte della gloria di Lewis Carroll. Egli non insegnava solo ai bambini a reggersi sulla testa; insegnava anche ai docenti a reggersi sulla testa. È una buona prova per una testa reggervisi sopra. Quando i Vittoriani volevano una vacanza, se la facevano, una vera vacanza intellettuale. Crearono davvero un mondo che, almeno per me, è ancora una sorta di strana casa, una segreta vacanza, un mondo in cui i mostri, terrificanti in altre fiabe, erano mutati in animali da compagnia. Nulla li priverà della gloria di ciò. Era nonsenso per amore del nonsenso. Se domandiamo dove fu trovato questo specchio magico, la risposta è che fu trovato tra mobili vittoriani assai imbottiti: in altre parole, si dovette all’accidente storico per cui Dodgson e Oxford e l’Inghilterra erano, in quel momento, oltremodo comodi e sicuri. Sapevano che non ci sarebbe stata alcuna lotta, tranne il sistema dei partiti, in cui Tweedledum e Tweedledee convennero di darsi battaglia, essendo la battaglia assai meno evidente dell’accordo. Sapevano che la loro Inghilterra non poteva vedere invasione o rivoluzione; sapevano che si arricchiva col commercio; non si rendevano conto che l’agricoltura stava morendo, forse perché era già morta; non avevano contadini.
Trovarono il loro piatto contrario in quell’altro grande amante dei bambini, la cui storia è narrata mirabilmente ne La vita di Hans Christian Andersen di Signe Toksvig. Hans Andersen era egli stesso un contadino, e proveniva da quello che è ancora un paese di contadini. In mille modi, Hans Andersen rappresentava l’esatto opposto del docente al riparo nel suo salotto vittoriano imbottito. Hans era esposto a tutti i venti che soffiavano, come un contadino sui suoi campi, come un contadino sui campi di battaglia europei. Crebbe alla meglio, pieno d’una sorta di patetica e avida ambizione, quale i docenti di Oxford non mostrano. Aveva sperimentato ogni realtà, compresa la propria debolezza e i propri desideri. Fece cento cose, cose idiote, che il signor Dodgson avrebbe trovato impensabili; ma poiché era un contadino aveva le sue compensazioni. Rimase in contatto con l’enorme tradizione della terra in fatto di mistero e incanto… non dovette fabbricare una nuova e piuttosto artificiale specie di fiaba a partire da triangoli e sillogismi.
Hans Andersen was not only an uncle loved by children, he was a child. He was one of those great children of our Christian past who have had the Divine favour which is called arrested development. His faults were the faults of a child—and very annoying faults they were. Why do aged men after reading this book, love Hans Andersen? I answer, because the most lovable thing in the world is humility. Now Hans Andersen had a vast vanity, which was founded on humility. I know that modern psychologists have called the combination an inferiority complex—but there is always an element of humility in the man who does not conceal his vanity.
Nobody ever made it so naked and shameless as poor Hans Andersen. But my intention here is only to stir such thoughts as are aroused by those contrasted types, neither of which, I hope, will ever be forgotten as nursery classics. Both had many imitators, I hope I shall not be misunderstood if I say that Hans Andersen was perhaps even greater, because he was himself an imitator. That great peasant, that great poet in prose, had the peasant quality which the Victorians had lost—the old mystical feeling about the ordinary materials of life. Hans Andersen would have found more on this side of the looking-glass than Alice found on the other. Beyond are fantastic mathematical projections; but why go through the looking-glass when all the rest of the furniture, all the chairs and tables, can be animated by elves?
My comparisons are becoming odious. It is because there is no variation in verbal praise. Differentation sounds like depreciation. Which is better; to have distilled from the dense commercial solidity of the modern world a wild new wine or honey of intellectual nonsense, or to have enlarged that large and magnificent accumulation of popular imagination in the past, and to have made again, with an original note, the great fairy-tale that is really a folk-tale? I only know that if you try to deprive me of either of them, there will be a row.
AND SO TO BED
I WILL not say that the Englishman is the most subtle of all the beasts of the field; for he is obviously not a beast, still less a snake, and least of all a devil. But it is true that he is in many ways the most complex type in Christendom. He is never so complex as when he is not entirely conscious; and especially when the last twist of his labyrinthine complexity takes the form of claiming to be simple; to be rough and tough and bluff like Major Bagstock. And one of the weirdest things about him is the subconscious or semi-conscious art and skill, with which he arranges history and human facts so as to soothe and satisfy himself, without quite clearly realising what he is doing or why he is doing it. In truth, the Englishman is the one man really made for psycho-analysis. He really does instinctively erect screens and scenery, half symbolic and half secretive, to protect a hidden thought. All these things filtered through my mind in reading Mr. Arthur Bryant’s excellent last volume on Pepys: “Samuel Pepys: The Years of Peril”.
Nine men out of ten in this country, above the most unlettered class, could tell you with some confidence who Pepys was. He was a funny fellow who kept a Diary. He was a roguish fellow, and the fun of his Diary consists chiefly in his confessions of infidelity to a wife, or flirtations with a chambermaid. He wrote in quaint short sentences, often parodied in the newspapers; and he ended as many entries as possible with the phrase, “and so to bed”. Now it is a very queer thing that this should be so universally known, and that nothing else about the same man should be known at all. For this mildly scandalous journal was only kept for a short time, comparatively early in his life; and even so the proportion of scandal is exaggerated. There were not many men in England then, or possibly now, whose sincere confessions in youth would be very different. Meanwhile, the rest of his life was a public life of practical usefulness and profound importance. He, with about one other man, made modern England a great naval power. The reply, it will be generally supposed, is that the public heard of the Diary first, long ago, while curious scholars have lately dug up the details about the permanent official. But in mere common sense, the case is exactly the other way. The Diary was kept in a close cipher, apparently impenetrable and long unpenetrated. But the political life of Pepys had been no more private than the public life of Cromwell or Cardinal Wolsey. Political foes tried to impeach him as openly as Warren Hastings in Westminster Hall; that he might be executed as openly as Charles I at Whitehall. In the famous phrase of the Regicide, this thing was not done in a corner. His foes were the first men of the age, like Shaftesbury and Halifax; and they filled the streets with mobs of the Brisk Boys with the Green Ribbons, roaring for the blood of such servants of the Crown. And the roguish little fellow of the Diary stood up under that storm and steered like a ship the policy that has launched the ships of England. He fought for a fighting fleet, more or less of the modern model, exactly as Cobden fought for Free Trade or Gladstone for Home Rule. And he did not write anything corresponding to “and so to bed” till he had seen those ships make their harbour. Now why is that most exciting passage in patriotic history practically left out of our rather too patriotic histories? Why is the hero of it known only as a buffoon winking at a maidservant? There is no reason that can be called simple, in the sense of superficial. Pepys was a very normal national man; Protestant like any other and as insular as most. Englishmen, especially English historians, are excessively devoted to what is national and very particularly to what is novel. And it is hardly exaggerative to say he could have written “Samuel Pepys”, like the signature of a craftsman or architect, under the word Victory where it shone upon the ship of Nelson.
Hans Andersen non era soltanto uno zio amato dai bambini, egli era un bambino. Era uno di quei grandi bambini del nostro passato cristiano che hanno avuto il favore divino che si chiama sviluppo arrestato. I suoi difetti erano i difetti di un bambino… e difetti assai irritanti erano. Perché uomini attempati, dopo aver letto questo libro, amano Hans Andersen? Rispondo: perché la cosa più amabile al mondo è l’umiltà. Ora, Hans Andersen aveva una vasta vanità, che era fondata sull’umiltà. So che gli psicologi moderni hanno chiamato tale combinazione un complesso d’inferiorità… ma c’è sempre un elemento di umiltà nell’uomo che non nasconde la propria vanità.
Nessuno mai la rese così nuda e spudorata come il povero Hans Andersen. Ma il mio intento qui è solo di suscitare quei pensieri che sono destati da quei tipi contrapposti, nessuno dei quali, spero, sarà mai dimenticato come classico dell’infanzia. Entrambi ebbero molti imitatori, e spero di non essere frainteso se dico che Hans Andersen fu forse ancora più grande, perché fu egli stesso un imitatore. Quel grande contadino, quel grande poeta in prosa, aveva la qualità contadina che i Vittoriani avevano perduto… l’antico sentimento mistico intorno agli ordinari materiali della vita. Hans Andersen avrebbe trovato più cose da questo lato dello specchio di quante Alice ne trovò dall’altro. Al di là vi sono fantastiche proiezioni matematiche; ma perché attraversare lo specchio quando tutto il resto del mobilio, tutte le sedie e i tavoli, possono essere animati dagli elfi?
I miei paragoni stanno diventando odiosi. È perché non c’è variazione nella lode verbale. La differenziazione suona come un deprezzamento. Che cosa è meglio: aver distillato dalla densa solidità commerciale del mondo moderno un vino nuovo e selvaggio o un miele di nonsenso intellettuale, oppure aver ampliato quel grande e magnifico accumulo di immaginazione popolare del passato, e aver ricreato, con una nota originale, la grande fiaba che è davvero un racconto popolare? So soltanto che se tentate di privarmi dell’uno o dell’altro, ci sarà una zuffa.
E COSÌ A LETTO
NON dirò che l’Inglese è la più sottile di tutte le bestie dei campi; poiché egli evidentemente non è una bestia, tanto meno un serpente, e meno che mai un demonio. Ma è vero che egli è per molti versi il tipo più complesso della Cristianità. Non è mai così complesso come quando non è del tutto consapevole; e specialmente quando l’ultima piega della sua labirintica complessità prende la forma di pretendere di essere semplice; di essere rude e duro e schietto come il maggiore Bagstock. E una delle cose più strane in lui è l’arte e l’abilità subconscia o semiconscia con cui dispone la storia e i fatti umani così da acquietarsi e soddisfarsi, senza rendersi del tutto chiaramente conto di ciò che fa o perché lo fa. In verità, l’Inglese è l’uomo davvero fatto per la psicoanalisi. Egli davvero erige d’istinto schermi e scenari, per metà simbolici e per metà segretivi, a protezione di un pensiero nascosto. Tutte queste cose mi filtravano nella mente leggendo l’eccellente ultimo volume del signor Arthur Bryant su Pepys: «Samuel Pepys: Gli anni del pericolo».
Nove uomini su dieci in questo paese, al di sopra della classe più illetterata, saprebbero dirvi con una certa sicurezza chi fosse Pepys. Era un tipo buffo che teneva un Diario. Era un tipo furfantesco, e il divertimento del suo Diario consiste soprattutto nelle sue confessioni d’infedeltà a una moglie, o di flirt con una cameriera. Scriveva in bizzarre frasi brevi, spesso parodiate nei giornali; e concludeva quante più annotazioni possibile con la frase «e così a letto». Ora è cosa assai curiosa che ciò sia così universalmente noto, e che null’altro sullo stesso uomo sia noto affatto. Poiché questo giornale blandamente scandaloso fu tenuto solo per breve tempo, relativamente presto nella sua vita; e anche così la proporzione di scandalo è esagerata. Non c’erano molti uomini in Inghilterra allora, o forse ora, le cui sincere confessioni in gioventù sarebbero state molto diverse. Nel frattempo, il resto della sua vita fu una vita pubblica di pratica utilità e profonda importanza. Egli, con circa un altro uomo, fece dell’Inghilterra moderna una grande potenza navale. La replica, si supporrà generalmente, è che il pubblico venne a sapere del Diario per primo, molto tempo fa, mentre eruditi curiosi hanno di recente dissotterrato i particolari sul funzionario permanente. Ma a semplice buon senso, il caso sta esattamente all’inverso. Il Diario fu tenuto in una fitta cifra, apparentemente impenetrabile e a lungo non penetrata. Ma la vita politica di Pepys non era stata più privata della vita pubblica di Cromwell o del Cardinale Wolsey. Nemici politici tentarono di metterlo in stato d’accusa apertamente come Warren Hastings nella Westminster Hall; affinché potesse essere giustiziato apertamente come Carlo I a Whitehall. Nella celebre frase del Regicidio, questa cosa non fu fatta in un angolo. I suoi nemici erano i primi uomini dell’epoca, come Shaftesbury e Halifax; e riempirono le strade di folle dei Brisk Boys con i Nastri Verdi, urlanti per il sangue di tali servitori della Corona. E il furfantesco ometto del Diario si drizzò sotto quella tempesta e governò come una nave la politica che ha varato le navi dell’Inghilterra. Combatté per una flotta da combattimento, più o meno del modello moderno, esattamente come Cobden combatté per il Libero Scambio o Gladstone per l’Autonomia irlandese. E non scrisse nulla che corrispondesse a «e così a letto» finché non ebbe visto quelle navi guadagnare il porto. Ora perché quel passaggio quanto mai avvincente della storia patriottica è praticamente lasciato fuori dalle nostre storie fin troppo patriottiche? Perché il suo eroe è noto solo come un buffone che ammicca a una serva? Non c’è ragione che possa dirsi semplice, nel senso di superficiale. Pepys era un uomo nazionale assai normale; protestante come chiunque altro e insulare quanto la maggior parte. Gli Inglesi, e specialmente gli storici inglesi, sono eccessivamente devoti a ciò che è nazionale e assai particolarmente a ciò che è nuovo. E non è quasi esagerato dire che egli avrebbe potuto scrivere «Samuel Pepys», come la firma di un artigiano o di un architetto, sotto la parola Vittoria là dove essa splendeva sulla nave di Nelson.
There is only one explanation. There can be no other; and it is simply this. You cannot praise the patriotism of Pepys without also praising the patriotism of James II, then James, Duke of York. You cannot tell the story at all, without letting it stand out with startling clearness that Samuel Pepys the Protestant might never have started work, and would certainly never have done the work, without the devoted practical support, and even prompting, of James Stuart the Papist. And his story had to be told so as to enforce only one moral; that Papistry was the enemy of Patriotism. In plain words, you have to admit that the prince, who did more than any other to enable Britannia to rule the waves, was the same Prince who was driven across the same waves into exile, simply and solely because he was a Roman Catholic. And that was more than the English historians dared to admit; merely to do justice to the patriotism of a poor little Government official. That single catastrophe, in the way of letting the Catholic cat out of the Protestant bag, would have turned upside-down the whole orthodox official academic History of England.
But the point is, as I have said, that the thing is almost unthinkably subtle, often semi-conscious; and at once collective and secretive. It is a sort of vague but repeated gesture (like that of somebody stroking the cat) which has gradually put all this lively part of history to sleep; and moulded the story so as to soothe the successful side. There is no veto on studying the period; no overt official command to take a certain line; there was simply an instinct to take the line of least resistance. The main facts of the time were seldom even contradicted; they were only neglected. And I can imagine with what a stare of simple wonder I should be regarded, by the man in the street, who is quite willing to talk to me about Pepys, if I said there was a sort of conspiracy to connect Pepys only with his Diary. Is not the Diary a very amusing book? Yes. Was not Pepys a Protestant? Yes. Do we not generally praise patriots, especially Protestant patriots? Yes. But if Pitt or Palmerston or Disraeli had written a very amusing Diary, people would discuss each statesman with reference to his statesmanship; and then say, “I always think he is most delightful in his Diary. Have you read his Diary?”
By this vast vague corporate craft or silent strategy, there has been built up in this country a quite abnormal condition of mental and moral Comfort. And we know, because Mr. Winston Churchill tells us in the Strand Magazine, that we have a noble Parliament and more freedom than any foreigners; and a poor man has as much chance as a rich man in our courts of law. And so to bed.
AS LARGE AS LIFE IN DICKENS
NOTHING IS more characteristic of Dickens, nothing has so handicapped him with the languid modern reader as the vast crowding of his stage with innumerable and bewilderingly well-painted characters. He has passed through a period in which it has been customary among certain people to deride him; but the whole indifference to Dickens has arisen from the strange idea that literature should copy life. While realism was in full swing it was easy to point out that no person ever existed so horrible as Quilp, or so grandiloquent as Snodgrass, or unscrupulous as Ralph Nickleby, so entirely pathetic as Little Nell. But we have tired of realism. We have suddenly awakened to the fact that art has nothing to do with copying. It is strange, but true, that the same movement and discovery which has been the justification of Aubrey Beardsley has been the justification of Dickens.
Dickens, of course, has been a great deal handicapped by the common habit among his admirers of praising him for the wrong things. He is praised for being ‘true to life’, while his true merit is not that he is true to life, but alive. It is common to hear a man say when Dickens is accused of exaggeration, “I have met a man exactly like Pecksniff.” Of course, to begin with, he has not met a person like Pecksniff any more than he has met one like Caliban. And further, if he had met a man exactly like Pecksniff, it would go far to show that Dickens was not a great novelist. Since no two men in real life are exactly like each other, so no fictitious character ought to be exactly like a real character. He ought to be an addition to the existing stock of real characters. His passions and traditions, his instincts and memories, should be blended together in entirely new quantities into an entirely new colour never seen before from the beginning upon the palette of life. If it be true (as I believe it is) that no person precisely like Mrs. Micawber ever existed or ever will exist in the whole domain of the universe, then we know that Mrs. Micawber is like life. We know that Dickens created as Life itself creates.
This is the far higher sense in which great art is ‘like life’, far higher, that is, than the ordinary sense in which the phrase is used. Great literature is like life. Not because it is accurate to the leaves on the tree and the pattern on the carpet and the words men actually employ; it is like life because it has in it the exuberant energy of life, its power of production, its sense of hope and memory, its consciousness of an almost immortal vitality. Great literature, in short, is like life because it also is living. An admirer of Dickens, therefore, ought to be ashamed of defending the great master by pretending that he did not exaggerate. He exaggerated by the same living law which makes the birds chatter in pairing time or the kitten fight with its own tail. The passion behind all his work was joy, and the final touch of exaggeration is the absolute necessity of the great literature of joy.
This mistake about Dickens arose, of course, because a critical generation had forgotten altogether that there even was such a thing as the great literature of joy. We have fallen into the way of thinking that literature is a refuge for weak temperaments, that literature may express all the darker and quainter moods, all the moods of regret or rebellion or hesitation, but never that one universal mood, streaming like a river through heaven and earth, by which alone all things consent to live. Dickens has seemed to us vulgar and impossible, and sprawlingly inartistic, for the simple reason that he is too strong for us. His bewildering crowds and mobs of characters, his vast mazy travels over England and America, his endless banquets and conversations, his intense realism and his frantic unreality, are all manifestations of a quite insatiable and omnivorous power of mental pleasure to which our period has lost the key. He was the last of the great comic writers; since his time we have lost the power of realizing the connection between the words ‘great’ and ‘comic’. We have forgotten that Aristophanes and Rabelais stand with Aeschylus and Dante; that their folly was wiser and more solid than our wisdom, and that their levity has outlasted a hundred philosophies. Dickens exaggerates, and it is not a fault but a merit; it is of the same kind as the exaggerations of the great French humorist, whose vigorous and almost monstrous power of happiness was only contented with a giant who could lift his head above Notre Dame and ride away with the bells upon his bridle. Therefore Dickens has become to the orthodox artistic world of today what Rabelais has become to many of the modern schools— a thing obscure with excess of jesting, a positive darkness of joy.
C’è una sola spiegazione. Non ce ne può essere altra; ed è semplicemente questa. Non si può lodare il patriottismo di Pepys senza lodare anche il patriottismo di Giacomo II, allora Giacomo, duca di York. Non si può raccontare affatto la storia senza lasciar risaltare con sorprendente chiarezza che Samuel Pepys il protestante forse non avrebbe mai cominciato l’opera, e di certo non l’avrebbe mai compiuta, senza il devoto appoggio pratico, e persino l’incoraggiamento, di Giacomo Stuart il papista. E la sua storia doveva essere raccontata così da imporre una sola morale: che il papismo era il nemico del patriottismo. In parole povere, si deve ammettere che il principe che fece più di ogni altro per mettere Britannia in grado di dominare i flutti, era lo stesso principe che fu cacciato attraverso quei medesimi flutti in esilio, semplicemente e unicamente perché era cattolico romano. E ciò era più di quanto gli storici inglesi osassero ammettere; per il mero fatto di rendere giustizia al patriottismo di un povero piccolo funzionario governativo. Quella sola catastrofe, quanto a lasciar uscire il gatto cattolico dal sacco protestante, avrebbe rovesciato l’intera Storia d’Inghilterra ortodossa, ufficiale e accademica.
Ma il punto è, come ho detto, che la cosa è quasi impensabilmente sottile, spesso semiconscia; e a un tempo collettiva e segretiva. È una sorta di gesto vago ma ripetuto (come quello di qualcuno che accarezza il gatto) che ha gradualmente addormentato tutta questa parte viva della storia; e plasmato il racconto così da acquietare la parte vincitrice. Non c’è veto allo studio del periodo; nessun aperto comando ufficiale di prendere una certa linea; c’era semplicemente un istinto a seguire la linea di minor resistenza. I fatti principali dell’epoca furono di rado persino contraddetti; furono solo trascurati. E posso immaginare con quale sguardo di semplice stupore sarei considerato, dall’uomo della strada, che è ben disposto a parlarmi di Pepys, se dicessi che c’era una sorta di cospirazione per collegare Pepys solo al suo Diario. Non è forse il Diario un libro assai divertente? Sì. Non era forse Pepys un protestante? Sì. Non lodiamo forse in genere i patrioti, specialmente i patrioti protestanti? Sì. Ma se Pitt o Palmerston o Disraeli avessero scritto un Diario assai divertente, la gente discuterebbe ciascuno statista con riferimento alla sua arte di governo; e poi direbbe: «Lo trovo sempre delizioso nel suo Diario. Avete letto il suo Diario?».
Grazie a questa vasta e vaga arte corporativa o silenziosa strategia, si è edificata in questo paese una condizione del tutto anomala di Agio mentale e morale. E sappiamo, perché il signor Winston Churchill ce lo dice nello Strand Magazine, che abbiamo un nobile Parlamento e più libertà di qualsiasi straniero; e che un povero ha altrettante probabilità di un ricco nelle nostre corti di giustizia. E così a letto.
GRANDI COME LA VITA IN DICKENS
NULLA È più caratteristico di Dickens, nulla lo ha tanto svantaggiato agli occhi del languido lettore moderno quanto il vasto affollamento del suo palcoscenico con personaggi innumerevoli e sconcertantemente ben dipinti. Egli ha attraversato un periodo in cui è stato consuetudine tra certe persone deriderlo; ma tutta l’indifferenza verso Dickens è nata dalla strana idea che la letteratura debba copiare la vita. Mentre il realismo era in pieno fervore era facile far notare che nessuna persona è mai esistita così orribile come Quilp, o così magniloquente come Snodgrass, o senza scrupoli come Ralph Nickleby, o così interamente patetica come la piccola Nell. Ma ci siamo stancati del realismo. Ci siamo improvvisamente risvegliati al fatto che l’arte non ha nulla a che fare col copiare. È strano, ma vero, che il medesimo movimento e la medesima scoperta che è stata la giustificazione di Aubrey Beardsley è stata la giustificazione di Dickens.
Dickens, naturalmente, è stato assai svantaggiato dalla comune abitudine dei suoi ammiratori di lodarlo per le cose sbagliate. Lo si loda per essere «fedele alla vita», mentre il suo vero merito non è di essere fedele alla vita, ma vivo. È comune sentire un uomo dire, quando si accusa Dickens di esagerazione: «Ho incontrato un uomo esattamente come Pecksniff». Naturalmente, tanto per cominciare, egli non ha incontrato una persona simile a Pecksniff più di quanto ne abbia incontrata una simile a Caliban. E inoltre, se avesse incontrato un uomo esattamente come Pecksniff, ciò tenderebbe a dimostrare che Dickens non era un grande romanziere. Poiché nessun uomo nella vita reale è esattamente uguale a un altro, così nessun personaggio di finzione dovrebbe essere esattamente uguale a un personaggio reale. Dovrebbe essere un’aggiunta alla scorta esistente di personaggi reali. Le sue passioni e tradizioni, i suoi istinti e ricordi, dovrebbero essere fusi insieme in quantità del tutto nuove in un colore del tutto nuovo mai visto prima dal principio sulla tavolozza della vita. Se è vero (come credo che sia) che nessuna persona precisamente come la signora Micawber è mai esistita o mai esisterà in tutto il dominio dell’universo, allora sappiamo che la signora Micawber è simile alla vita. Sappiamo che Dickens creava come la Vita stessa crea.
Questo è il senso assai più alto in cui la grande arte è «simile alla vita», assai più alto, cioè, del senso ordinario in cui la frase è usata. La grande letteratura è simile alla vita. Non perché è fedele alle foglie sull’albero e al disegno sul tappeto e alle parole che gli uomini realmente adoperano; è simile alla vita perché ha in sé l’esuberante energia della vita, la sua capacità di produzione, il suo senso di speranza e di memoria, la sua coscienza di una vitalità quasi immortale. La grande letteratura, in breve, è simile alla vita perché anch’essa è vivente. Un ammiratore di Dickens, perciò, dovrebbe vergognarsi di difendere il grande maestro fingendo che egli non esagerasse. Egli esagerava per la medesima legge vivente che fa cinguettare gli uccelli al tempo degli accoppiamenti o azzuffare il gattino con la propria coda. La passione dietro tutta la sua opera era la gioia, e l’ultimo tocco di esagerazione è l’assoluta necessità della grande letteratura della gioia.
Questo errore su Dickens sorse, naturalmente, perché una generazione critica aveva del tutto dimenticato che esistesse persino una cosa come la grande letteratura della gioia. Siamo caduti nell’abitudine di pensare che la letteratura sia un rifugio per i temperamenti deboli, che la letteratura possa esprimere tutti gli stati d’animo più cupi e più bizzarri, tutti gli stati d’animo di rimpianto o di ribellione o di esitazione, ma mai quell’unico stato d’animo universale, che scorre come un fiume attraverso il cielo e la terra, per il quale soltanto tutte le cose consentono a vivere. Dickens ci è parso volgare e impossibile, e sgangheratamente inartistico, per la semplice ragione che è troppo forte per noi. Le sue sconcertanti folle e masse di personaggi, i suoi vasti e labirintici viaggi per l’Inghilterra e l’America, i suoi interminabili banchetti e conversazioni, il suo intenso realismo e la sua frenetica irrealtà, sono tutte manifestazioni di un potere del tutto insaziabile e onnivoro di piacere mentale di cui la nostra epoca ha perduto la chiave. Egli fu l’ultimo dei grandi scrittori comici; dal suo tempo abbiamo perduto la capacità di cogliere il legame tra le parole «grande» e «comico». Abbiamo dimenticato che Aristofane e Rabelais stanno accanto a Eschilo e Dante; che la loro follia era più saggia e più solida della nostra saggezza, e che la loro leggerezza è sopravvissuta a cento filosofie. Dickens esagera, e non è un difetto ma un pregio; è dello stesso genere delle esagerazioni del grande umorista francese, la cui vigorosa e quasi mostruosa capacità di felicità si accontentava solo di un gigante che potesse alzare la testa al di sopra di Notre Dame e cavalcare via con le campane alle briglie. Perciò Dickens è divenuto per il mondo artistico ortodosso di oggi ciò che Rabelais è divenuto per molte delle scuole moderne… una cosa oscura per eccesso di scherzo, una positiva tenebra di gioia.
There are many evidences that the great truth and passion behind the work of Dickens was this sense of joy in things; just as much as the great truth and passion behind Thackeray was a sense of their almost sacred pathos, or the great truth and passion behind Hawthorne a sense of their weird significance. But the best evidence of all lies in the fact that Dickens was never so triumphantly successful as in describing the type of man whose existence in this world, in which he has neither money nor honour, seems to depend entirely on his high spirits and his capacity for realizing the magnificence of the flying moment. All Dickens’ sticks of heroes and dolls of heroines may, of course, be thrown aside: the real ideal figure of Dickens is William Micawber. Dick Swiveller, his next best character, is a man of the same type; they both represent a kind of shabby poet, whose continual lack of money and utter antagonism to the order of society can never kill him, because of his everlasting pleasure in old memories and very old quotations. They have alike the same mutability, the same impecuniosity, the same florid, but genuine, taste in literature, the same continual and crushing misfortunes, the same mysterious, but unbreakable, immortality. They are never ended, because, fools and rascals as they are they hold on to something which belongs, not to society but to the soul: the power of joy. And note here that Dickens, describing these men who are nearest to his heart, is not only vigorous, living and entertaining, as he always is, but far truer to the facts even than is his wont. Pecksniff is a spirited and amusing bogey for a pure farce, but such a hypocrite never lived in this mean earth; we shall meet him in a better and bolder world. Mr. Squeers is a good, black grotesque figure from the outside, but he has no inside. But Micawber and Swiveller (especially the latter) are true to the tenor of life; they see the humour of their own exaggerations, they live avowedly on their own good spirits. And in them Dickens really touches problems and elements of greatness which are as old as the world and as great as any tragedy. He touches, for example, the great tragedy of Ireland, which after innumerable sorrows still lives upon an outrageous gaiety. Above all he touches the case of the great masses of the poor, whom he loved. He saw deeper than a hundred statisticians and philanthropic economists. No man on earth was ever a more fierce and mutinous Radical than he; but he saw that all calculations of the mortal hours of men left out the everlasting moment.
DISPUTES ON DICKENS
AN INTERESTING little controversy began some time ago in the Academy on the position of Dickens, and it throws a flood of light on the real character of the temporary reaction against that great novelist’s fame. ‘E.A.B.’, the able and decisive Academy critic is a typical representative of the school devoted to ‘Art’ in its more technical sense, and like all the critics of that school he has a clear, hard and almost scientific critical method of critical test. Dickens falls in his eyes because of what he calls his ‘artistic ignorance and indifference’ and his lack of ‘feeling for literature’, all of which means that Dickens was not an artist of the particular pattern which French fiction in the nineteenth century has made essential and even popular.
Of course, this particular scheme of criticism will say what it has to say and pass, as so many other schemes of criticism have passed. We shall never, thank Heaven, have a sound and conclusive scheme of literary art, any more than we shall have a scheme of theology which makes the universe as obvious as a figure in geometry. If there were produced a really final and satisfactory justification of religion on logical grounds, most healthy-minded people would immediately cease to believe in religion; and if there were such a justification of art, most healthy-minded people would cease to believe in art. Touching these high matters we can endure anything except that they should turn out to be so small that we can even understand them. And so the ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ school of criticism will be found to be merely relative and in a century or so Flaubert the critic will be as dead and as interesting as Aristotle. But Flaubert the novelist will remain impeccable and also Dickens the novelist. For it is only the things which are deliberately built to last for ever which cannot do so.
The real reason of the temporary eclipse of the fame of Dickens is not that he was a faulty artist but that he expressed almost faultlessly a certain class of thoughts and emotions which happen at this moment to be almost absent from the cultivated class. It was not that he expressed badly but that we know nothing at all about the kind of thought and sentiment that he expressed well. It was not that he had a deficiency in his art, it is we that have a deficiency in our experience. The work of Dickens appears to us rambling and shapeless for precisely the same reason that the work of Maeterlinck would have appeared to Dickens rambling and shapeless. There is a mood at the back of the whole work of Dickens as much as there is a mood at the back of the whole work of Maeterlinck; and it must be confessed with shame, as far as I am concerned, that our mood is the mood of Maeterlinck and not the mood of Dickens. To ‘E.A.B.’ and his school, ‘Pickwick’ is not exactly either good or bad; it is simply not a novel at all. To the very best critics of Dickens’ time, ‘Pelleas and Melisande’ would have been something not exactly good or bad but simply not a drama at all. If they had seen it acted they would not have thought that the drama was deteriorating. They would only have thought that they themselves were going mad.
The truth is that whole schools of art and of great art can become merely mysterious and imbecile to the most enlightened generations if those generations do not cultivate the particular emotions by which those schools of art are inspired. Thus, for example, the whole of the Italian art, from Giotto to Botticelli would have appeared and did appear to the critics of the eighteenth century an ugly and infantile exhibition like the scrawlings of a child upon a slate. To the eighteenth century it was quite obvious that these medieval pictures were mere despicable beginnings. Their lines were drawn wrong, their colours were arranged wrong, their figures were anatomical monstrosities, their landscapes had the absurdity of Noah’s Ark, their saints had the grimness of an army of idiots. No blasphemer had ever dared to draw upon his darkest page a picture so impious as this picture of an insane universe with its grinning angels, its gaping saints. Not the most secret volume of eighteenth-century atheism had conceived in its wrath and satire such a celestial parody as these painters had conceived in their humility and faith. Such was the impression which Christian art produced on the whole of the ‘age des philosophes’: that it was an example of an almost shocking innocence like a baby’s picture of God.
Vi sono molte prove che la grande verità e passione dietro l’opera di Dickens era questo senso di gioia nelle cose; tanto quanto la grande verità e passione dietro Thackeray era un senso del loro pathos quasi sacro, o la grande verità e passione dietro Hawthorne un senso del loro strano significato. Ma la prova migliore di tutte sta nel fatto che Dickens non fu mai così trionfalmente riuscito come nel descrivere il tipo d’uomo la cui esistenza in questo mondo, in cui non ha né denaro né onore, sembra dipendere interamente dal suo buonumore e dalla sua capacità di cogliere la magnificenza dell’attimo fuggente. Tutti i fantocci di eroi e le bambole di eroine di Dickens possono, naturalmente, essere gettati via: la vera figura ideale di Dickens è William Micawber. Dick Swiveller, il suo personaggio subito migliore, è un uomo dello stesso tipo; entrambi rappresentano una sorta di poeta squattrinato, la cui continua mancanza di denaro e totale antagonismo all’ordine della società non possono mai ucciderlo, per via del suo eterno piacere nei vecchi ricordi e nelle vecchissime citazioni. Hanno del pari la stessa mutevolezza, la stessa impecuniosità, il medesimo gusto florido, ma genuino, in letteratura, le medesime continue e schiaccianti sventure, la medesima misteriosa, ma infrangibile, immortalità. Non finiscono mai, perché, per quanto sciocchi e furfanti siano, si aggrappano a qualcosa che appartiene non alla società ma all’anima: il potere della gioia. E si noti qui che Dickens, descrivendo questi uomini che gli sono più cari, non è solo vigoroso, vivo e divertente, come sempre è, ma assai più fedele ai fatti di quanto sia sua consuetudine. Pecksniff è uno spiritoso e divertente spauracchio per una pura farsa, ma un simile ipocrita non è mai vissuto su questa gretta terra; lo incontreremo in un mondo migliore e più ardito. Il signor Squeers è una buona, nera figura grottesca dall’esterno, ma non ha interno. Ma Micawber e Swiveller (specialmente il secondo) sono fedeli al tenore della vita; vedono l’umorismo delle proprie esagerazioni, vivono dichiaratamente del proprio buonumore. E in essi Dickens tocca davvero problemi ed elementi di grandezza antichi quanto il mondo e grandi quanto qualsiasi tragedia. Egli tocca, per esempio, la grande tragedia dell’Irlanda, che dopo innumerevoli dolori vive ancora di un’oltraggiosa allegria. Soprattutto tocca il caso delle grandi masse dei poveri, che egli amava. Vide più a fondo di cento statistici ed economisti filantropi. Nessun uomo sulla terra fu mai un Radicale più feroce e ammutinato di lui; ma egli vide che tutti i calcoli delle ore mortali degli uomini lasciavano fuori l’attimo eterno.
DISPUTE SU DICKENS
UNA piccola INTERESSANTE controversia cominciò qualche tempo fa sull’Academy intorno alla posizione di Dickens, ed essa getta un fascio di luce sul reale carattere della temporanea reazione contro la fama di quel grande romanziere. «E.A.B.», l’abile e risoluto critico dell’Academy, è un tipico rappresentante della scuola devota all’«Arte» nel suo senso più tecnico, e come tutti i critici di quella scuola egli ha un chiaro, duro e quasi scientifico metodo critico di prova critica. Dickens cade ai suoi occhi per via di ciò che egli chiama la sua «ignoranza e indifferenza artistica» e la sua mancanza di «sensibilità per la letteratura», tutto ciò significando che Dickens non era un artista del particolare modello che la narrativa francese nell’Ottocento ha reso essenziale e persino popolare.
Naturalmente, questo particolare schema di critica dirà ciò che ha da dire e passerà, come sono passati tanti altri schemi di critica. Non avremo mai, grazie al Cielo, uno schema sano e conclusivo dell’arte letteraria, non più di quanto avremo uno schema di teologia che renda l’universo ovvio come una figura di geometria. Se si producesse una giustificazione davvero definitiva e soddisfacente della religione su basi logiche, la maggior parte delle persone di mente sana cesserebbe immediatamente di credere nella religione; e se ci fosse una simile giustificazione dell’arte, la maggior parte delle persone di mente sana cesserebbe di credere nell’arte. Toccando queste alte materie possiamo sopportare qualunque cosa tranne che esse risultino tanto piccole da poterle persino comprendere. E così la scuola critica dell’«Arte per l’Arte» si rivelerà meramente relativa e tra un secolo o giù di lì Flaubert il critico sarà tanto morto e tanto interessante quanto Aristotele. Ma Flaubert il romanziere rimarrà impeccabile e così pure Dickens il romanziere. Poiché sono soltanto le cose deliberatamente costruite per durare in eterno che non possono farlo.
La vera ragione della temporanea eclissi della fama di Dickens non è che egli fosse un artista difettoso ma che egli esprimeva quasi impeccabilmente una certa classe di pensieri ed emozioni che in questo momento si trovano quasi assenti dalla classe colta. Non è che egli esprimesse male ma che noi non sappiamo nulla del genere di pensiero e di sentimento che egli esprimeva bene. Non è che egli avesse una deficienza nella sua arte, siamo noi ad avere una deficienza nella nostra esperienza. L’opera di Dickens ci appare sconnessa e informe precisamente per la stessa ragione per cui l’opera di Maeterlinck sarebbe apparsa a Dickens sconnessa e informe. C’è uno stato d’animo dietro tutta l’opera di Dickens tanto quanto c’è uno stato d’animo dietro tutta l’opera di Maeterlinck; e va confessato con vergogna, per quanto mi riguarda, che il nostro stato d’animo è lo stato d’animo di Maeterlinck e non lo stato d’animo di Dickens. Per «E.A.B.» e la sua scuola, «Pickwick» non è esattamente né buono né cattivo; semplicemente non è affatto un romanzo. Per i migliori critici del tempo di Dickens, «Pelléas e Mélisande» sarebbe stato qualcosa di non esattamente buono o cattivo ma semplicemente non affatto un dramma. Se l’avessero visto recitare non avrebbero pensato che il dramma stesse degenerando. Avrebbero solo pensato di stare loro stessi impazzendo.
La verità è che intere scuole d’arte e di grande arte possono diventare meramente misteriose e imbecilli per le generazioni più illuminate se quelle generazioni non coltivano le particolari emozioni da cui quelle scuole d’arte sono ispirate. Così, per esempio, l’intera arte italiana, da Giotto a Botticelli, sarebbe apparsa e apparve davvero ai critici del Settecento una brutta e infantile esibizione come gli scarabocchi di un bambino su una lavagna. Al Settecento era del tutto ovvio che questi quadri medievali fossero meri, spregevoli inizi. Le loro linee erano tracciate male, i loro colori erano disposti male, le loro figure erano mostruosità anatomiche, i loro paesaggi avevano l’assurdità dell’Arca di Noè, i loro santi avevano la truce durezza di un esercito di idioti. Nessun bestemmiatore aveva mai osato tracciare sulla sua pagina più tenebrosa un quadro tanto empio quanto questo quadro di un universo insano con i suoi angeli ghignanti, i suoi santi a bocca aperta. Neppure il più segreto volume dell’ateismo settecentesco aveva concepito nella sua ira e satira una parodia celeste quale questi pittori avevano concepito nella loro umiltà e fede. Tale era l’impressione che l’arte cristiana produceva sull’intera «age des philosophes»: che fosse un esempio di una innocenza quasi scandalosa come il disegno di Dio fatto da un bambino.
Then came the nineteenth century when man felt again the same emotions which had been felt in the time of Giotto. Men of the boldest and most liberal intellects began to dream the great medieval dream of a united and devout Christendom. Men of the ripest taste and opinion began to join celibate brotherhoods and school themselves with fast and flagellation. Poets, painters and musicians went back to the splendid superstitions of medieval Europe, and collected tales and delusions as industriously as a scientist could collect facts. Upon the whole nation descended again the great mood of mystery, the nameless convictions, the certainties that have no origin and the hopes that have no end. And with a start of indescribable surprise men found themselves looking at those dark old Italian pictures with new eyes. The lines that went wrong now went right; they perfectly expressed a quaint and delicate severity. The landscapes that looked absurd now looked enchanted; they were lit with the morning of the world. The faces that had been hideous had grown beautiful like the face of a good man when we have come to know him and cannot imagine any other features being the perfect picture of his soul. This is what has happened again and again in the world and will continue to happen until the end. When a set of emotions are unfamiliar to a people, the art which expresses them will appear not only superstitious but obviously inartistic. When a set of emotions become familiar to a people, the art which expresses them will appear not only philosophical but obviously artistic.
People who do not share the sentiment of Maeterlinck do not say that he is not moral or true to life, they say he does not write plays. People who do not share the sentiment of Whitman do not say that he is not right or not worthy, they say that he does not write poetry. People who do not share the sentiment of Dickens do not say that he is too optimistic or too conventional, they say that he had “absolutely no feeling for literature”.
When we come to examine the case of Dickens carefully, we find that this is exactly what has happened. The characteristics which ‘E.A.B.’ and other critics note as the defects of Dickens are in a great many instances the proper and inevitable modes of expressing a certain gigantic conviviality and cordiality. For example, ‘E.A.B.’ speaks of the formlessness of ‘Pickwick’, but he does not notice that what he calls formlessness was in fact a well-known and celebrated artistic form among the elder and more convivial writers. The sprawling and seemingly disconnected novel of comic adventure was a recognized and excellent form of art. Recent criticism I believe is accustomed to describe it as the ‘picaresque’ novel. For when we come to think of it, the whole point is very simple. The new impressionist method of brevity, restraint, and an adhesion to one central image or incident is the right and proper literary form to express the kind of things which the new Impressionist novel wishes to express; the little ironies, the sad small stories that end without an ending; the faces that are too bitter for tears. About these sort of things it may be said, not as a commonplace phrase, but as a sound and telling rule of art, that the less said about them the better. One flash of literary lightning revealing a woman dead in a garret with a victorious army marching by is enough if the sentiment concerned is the sentiment of a pitiful irony. But it is not enough if the sentiment is that of the ancient camaraderies and immortal enterprises of the ‘picaresque’ novel.
You cannot exhibit Sam Weller in a flash of lightning. The whole emotional significance of Sam Weller depends upon the idea that like some warrior of the mythic ages, he has passed unscathed through infinite adventures and will pass unscathed through innumerable adventures. The reason of the whole matter is that of misfortune we all desire to say little and that the words in a French short story should be few, like the words in a house of mourning. But the moment we come into the atmosphere of positive delight and exultation a new element enters in, the desire to linger. Books like ‘Pickwick’ are the most lingering. Men linger over their walks, over their talks, over their stories, over their dinners. All the characters seem friends who are talking together far into an immortal night to which no grey morning ever comes.
The formlessness of ‘Pickwick’ is therefore its form. This mood of exuberance has two natural expressions, the desire to linger and the desire to ramble. If Pickwick and his friends were not continually crossing a crowded stage which was for ever changing like a transformation scene and of which they only were the constant factors, it would not be a better book but a worse. If the whole story revolved round one incident like a story by Guy de Maupassant, if everything turned on the Fancy Dress Ball at Eatonswill or the Cricket Match at Dingley Dell, if the central symbol of the whole story were Mr. Sawyer’s red handkerchief or Mr. Winkle’s horse; if the Pickwick Papers in short were only a brilliant fragment of psychology about the fat boy, or a sad sea-green little idyll about Mr. Stiggins, it would not be a better book but a worse, for it would have lost its supreme meaning even as we have lost its sense of a world almost choked with adventure and a hero constant only in the mutability of a comic Ulysses, faithful only to his own omnivorous fickleness.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE AS A ROMANTIC
THE GENIUS OF Charlotte Bronte is unique in the only valuable sense in which the word can be applied; the only sense which separates the rarity of some gift in a poet from the rarity of some delusion in an asylum. However complex or even grotesque an artistic power may be, it must be as these qualities exist in a key, which is one of the most complex and grotesque of human objects, but which has for its object the opening of doors and the entrance into wider things. Charlotte Bronte’s art was something more or less than complex; and it was not to be described as grotesque; except rarely— and unintentionally, But it was temperamental and, like all things depending on temperament, unequal; and it was so personal as to be perverse. It is in connection with power of this kind, however creative, that we have to discover and define what distinguished it from the uncreative intensity of the insane. I cannot understand what it was that made the Philistines of a former generation regard Jane Eyre as morally unsound; probably it was its almost exaggerated morality. But if they had regarded it as mentally unsound, I could have understood their prejudice, while perceiving the nature of their error.
Poi venne l’Ottocento, quando l’uomo sentì di nuovo le medesime emozioni che erano state sentite al tempo di Giotto. Uomini dagli intelletti più arditi e più liberali cominciarono a sognare il grande sogno medievale di una Cristianità unita e devota. Uomini dal gusto e dall’opinione più maturi cominciarono a unirsi a confraternite celibi e a educarsi con digiuni e flagellazioni. Poeti, pittori e musicisti tornarono alle splendide superstizioni dell’Europa medievale, e raccolsero racconti e illusioni con la stessa industriosità con cui uno scienziato poteva raccogliere fatti. Sull’intera nazione discese di nuovo il grande stato d’animo del mistero, le convinzioni senza nome, le certezze che non hanno origine e le speranze che non hanno fine. E con un sussulto d’indescrivibile sorpresa gli uomini si trovarono a guardare quei cupi vecchi quadri italiani con occhi nuovi. Le linee che andavano storte ora andavano diritte; esprimevano perfettamente una bizzarra e delicata severità. I paesaggi che sembravano assurdi ora sembravano incantati; erano illuminati dal mattino del mondo. I volti che erano stati orribili erano divenuti belli come il volto di un uomo buono quando siamo giunti a conoscerlo e non riusciamo a immaginare che altri lineamenti possano essere il ritratto perfetto della sua anima. Questo è ciò che è accaduto più e più volte nel mondo e continuerà ad accadere fino alla fine. Quando un insieme di emozioni è estraneo a un popolo, l’arte che le esprime apparirà non solo superstiziosa ma manifestamente inartistica. Quando un insieme di emozioni diventa familiare a un popolo, l’arte che le esprime apparirà non solo filosofica ma manifestamente artistica.
Le persone che non condividono il sentimento di Maeterlinck non dicono che egli non è morale o fedele alla vita, dicono che non scrive drammi. Le persone che non condividono il sentimento di Whitman non dicono che egli non ha ragione o non è degno, dicono che non scrive poesia. Le persone che non condividono il sentimento di Dickens non dicono che egli è troppo ottimista o troppo convenzionale, dicono che egli non aveva «assolutamente alcuna sensibilità per la letteratura».
Quando veniamo a esaminare accuratamente il caso di Dickens, troviamo che questo è esattamente ciò che è accaduto. Le caratteristiche che «E.A.B.» e altri critici notano come i difetti di Dickens sono in moltissimi casi i modi propri e inevitabili di esprimere una certa gigantesca convivialità e cordialità. Per esempio, «E.A.B.» parla dell’informità di «Pickwick», ma non nota che ciò che egli chiama informità era in realtà una ben nota e celebre forma artistica tra gli scrittori più antichi e più conviviali. Il romanzo sgangherato e apparentemente sconnesso di comica avventura era una forma d’arte riconosciuta ed eccellente. La critica recente, credo, è solita descriverlo come il romanzo «picaresco». Poiché, a pensarci bene, tutto il punto è assai semplice. Il nuovo metodo impressionista di brevità, ritegno e adesione a un’unica immagine o episodio centrale è la forma letteraria giusta e propria per esprimere il genere di cose che il nuovo romanzo impressionista desidera esprimere; le piccole ironie, le tristi storielle che finiscono senza una fine; i volti troppo amari per le lacrime. Di queste sorta di cose si può dire, non come frase fatta, ma come regola d’arte sana ed efficace, che meno se ne parla meglio è. Un solo lampo di folgore letteraria che riveli una donna morta in una soffitta mentre un esercito vittorioso marcia accanto è sufficiente se il sentimento in questione è il sentimento di una pietosa ironia. Ma non è sufficiente se il sentimento è quello delle antiche camaraderie e delle immortali imprese del romanzo «picaresco».
Non si può mostrare Sam Weller in un lampo di folgore. L’intero significato emotivo di Sam Weller dipende dall’idea che, come qualche guerriero delle età mitiche, egli sia passato illeso attraverso infinite avventure e passerà illeso attraverso innumerevoli avventure. La ragione di tutta la faccenda è che della sventura desideriamo tutti dire poco e che le parole in un racconto breve francese dovrebbero essere poche, come le parole in una casa in lutto. Ma nel momento in cui entriamo nell’atmosfera del positivo diletto e dell’esultanza un nuovo elemento entra in gioco, il desiderio di indugiare. Libri come «Pickwick» sono i più indugianti. Gli uomini indugiano sulle loro passeggiate, sui loro discorsi, sulle loro storie, sulle loro cene. Tutti i personaggi sembrano amici che conversano insieme fin dentro un’immortale notte a cui nessun grigio mattino mai giunge.
L’informità di «Pickwick» è dunque la sua forma. Questo stato d’animo di esuberanza ha due espressioni naturali, il desiderio di indugiare e il desiderio di divagare. Se Pickwick e i suoi amici non attraversassero di continuo un palcoscenico affollato che mutava per sempre come una scena di trasformazione e di cui essi soli erano i fattori costanti, non sarebbe un libro migliore ma peggiore. Se l’intera storia ruotasse attorno a un unico episodio come un racconto di Guy de Maupassant, se tutto vertesse sul Ballo in Maschera a Eatanswill o sulla Partita di Cricket a Dingley Dell, se il simbolo centrale dell’intera storia fosse il fazzoletto rosso del signor Sawyer o il cavallo del signor Winkle; se, in breve, i Documenti Pickwick fossero solo un brillante frammento di psicologia sul ragazzo grasso, o un triste e verde-mare idillietto sul signor Stiggins, non sarebbe un libro migliore ma peggiore, poiché avrebbe perduto il suo supremo significato proprio come noi abbiamo perduto il suo senso di un mondo quasi soffocato dall’avventura e di un eroe costante solo nella mutevolezza di un comico Ulisse, fedele solo alla propria onnivora incostanza.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË COME ROMANTICA
IL GENIO DI Charlotte Brontë è unico nell’unico senso valido in cui la parola può essere applicata; l’unico senso che separa la rarità di qualche dono in un poeta dalla rarità di qualche delirio in un manicomio. Per quanto complesso o persino grottesco un potere artistico possa essere, esso deve essere come queste qualità esistono in una chiave, che è uno degli oggetti umani più complessi e grotteschi, ma che ha per suo scopo l’aprire porte e l’ingresso in cose più ampie. L’arte di Charlotte Brontë era qualcosa di più o meno che complesso; e non era da descrivere come grottesca; salvo di rado… e involontariamente. Ma era temperamentale e, come tutte le cose che dipendono dal temperamento, ineguale; ed era così personale da essere perversa. È in rapporto a un potere di questo genere, per quanto creativo, che dobbiamo scoprire e definire ciò che lo distingueva dall’increativa intensità del folle. Non riesco a capire che cosa fosse a indurre i Filistei di una generazione passata a considerare Jane Eyre come moralmente malsano; probabilmente era la sua moralità quasi esagerata. Ma se l’avessero considerato mentalmente malsano, avrei potuto comprendere il loro pregiudizio, pur avvertendo la natura del loro errore.
Jane Eyre is, among other things, one of the finest detective stories in the world; and for any one artistically attuned to that rather electric atmosphere, the discovery of the mad wife of Rochester is, as that type of sensation should always be, at once startling and suitable. But a stolid reader, trained in a tamer school of fiction, might be excused if he came to the conclusion that the wife was not very much madder than her husband, and that even the governess herself was a little queer. Such a critic, however, would be ill-taught, as people often are in tame schools; for the mildest school is anything but the most moral. The distinction between the liberating violence that belongs to virtue, as distinct from the merely burrowing and self-burying violence that belongs to vice, is something that can only be conveyed by metaphors; such as that I have used about the key. Some may feel disposed to say that the Bronte spirit was not so much a key as a battering ram. She had indeed some command of both instruments, and could use the more domestic one quietly enough at times; but the vital point is that they opened the doors. Or it might be said that Jane Eyre and the mad woman lived in the same dark and rambling house of mystery, but for the maniac all doors opened continually inwards, while for the heroine all doors, one after the other, opened outwards towards the sun.
One of these universal values in the case of Charlotte Bronte is the light she throws on a very fashionable aesthetic fallacy: the over-iterated contrast between realism and romance. They are spoken of as if they were two alternative types of art, and sometimes even as if they were two antagonistic directions of spiritual obligation. But in truth they are things in two different categories; and, like all such things, can exist together, or apart, or in any degree of combination. Romance is a spirit; and as for realism, it is a convention. To say that some literary work is realistic, not romantic, is to be as inconsequent as the man who said to me once, “The Irish are warm-hearted, not logical.” He, at any rate, was not logical, or he would have seen that his statement was like saying that somebody was red-haired rather than athletic.
There is no reason why a man with strong reasoning power should not have strong affections; and it is my experience, if anything, that the man who can argue clearly in the abstract generally does have a generosity of blood and instincts. But he may not have it, for the things are in different categories. This case of an error about the Irish has some application to the individual case of Charlotte Bronte, who was Irish by blood, and in a sense, all the more Irish for being brought up in Yorkshire. An Irish friend of mine, who suffers the same exile in the same environment, once made to me the suggestive remark that the towering and over-masculine barbarians and lunatics who dominate the Bronte novels, simply represent the impression produced by the rather boastful Yorkshire manners upon the more civilized and sensitive Irish temperament. But the wider application is that romance is an atmosphere, as distinct as a separate dimension, which co-exists with and penetrates the whole work of Charlotte Bronte; and is equally present in all her considerable triumphs of realism, and in her even greater triumphs of unreality.
Realism is a convention, as I have said; it is generally a matter of external artistic form, when it is not a matter of mere fashion or convenience, how far the details of life are given, or how far they are the details of the life we know best. It may be rather more difficult to describe a winged horse than a war horse; but after all it is as easy to count feathers as to count hairs; it is as easy and as dull. The story about a hero in which the hairs of his horse were all numbered would not be a story at all; the line must be drawn a long while before we come to anything like literal reality; and the question of whether we give the horse his wings, or even trouble to mention his colour, is merely a question of the artistic form we have chosen. It is the question between casting a horse in bronze or carving him in marble; not the question of describing a horse for the purposes of a zoologist or for the purposes of a bookie. But the spirit of the work is quite another thing. Works of the wildest fantasticality in form can be filled with a rationalistic and even a sober spirit; as are some works of Lucian, of Swift and of Voltaire. On the other hand, descriptions of the most humdrum environments, told with the most homely intimacy, can be shot through and through with the richest intensity, not only of the spirit of sentiment but of the spirit of adventure.
Few will be impelled to call the household of Mr. Rochester a humdrum environment, but it is none the less true that Charlotte Bronte can fill the quietest rooms and corners with a psychological romance which is rather a matter of temperature than of time or place. After all, the sympathetic treatment of Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre is not more intrinsically romantic and even exaggerative than the sympathetic treatment of Mr. Paul Emanuel in Villette; though the first may be superficially a sort of demon and the second more in the nature of an imp. To present Mr. Emanuel sympathetically at all was something of an arduous and chivalric adventure. And Charlotte Bronte was chivalric in this perfectly serious sense; perhaps in too serious a sense, for she paid for the red-hot reality of her romance in a certain insufficiency of humour. She was adventurous, but in an intensely individualistic and therefore an intensely womanly way.
It is the most feminine thing about her that we can think of her as a knight-errant, but hardly as one of an order or round table of knights-errant. Thackeray said that she reminded him of Joan of Arc. But it is one of the fascinating elements in the long romance of Christendom that figures like Joan of Arc have an existence in reality. This vision of the solitary virgin, adventurous and in arms, is very old in European literature and mythology; and the spirit of it went with the little governess along the roads to the dark mansion of madness as if to the castle of an ogre. The same rule had run like a silver thread through the purple tapestries of Ariosto; and we may willingly salute in our great country-woman, especially amid the greatest epic of our country, something of that nobility which is in the very name of Britomart.
Jane Eyre è, tra le altre cose, una delle più belle storie poliziesche del mondo; e per chiunque sia artisticamente sintonizzato su quell’atmosfera piuttosto elettrica, la scoperta della moglie pazza di Rochester è, come quel tipo di sensazione dovrebbe sempre essere, a un tempo sorprendente e appropriata. Ma un lettore ottuso, addestrato in una scuola di narrativa più mansueta, potrebbe essere scusato se giungesse alla conclusione che la moglie non fosse molto più pazza del marito, e che persino la governante stessa fosse un po’ strana. Un simile critico, tuttavia, sarebbe mal istruito, come spesso lo si è nelle scuole mansuete; poiché la scuola più mite è tutt’altro che la più morale. La distinzione tra la violenza liberatrice che appartiene alla virtù, in quanto distinta dalla violenza meramente scavatrice e autoseppellente che appartiene al vizio, è qualcosa che può essere trasmesso solo mediante metafore; come quella che ho usato a proposito della chiave. Alcuni potranno sentirsi disposti a dire che lo spirito delle Brontë era non tanto una chiave quanto un ariete. Ella aveva in effetti una certa padronanza di entrambi gli strumenti, e sapeva usare quello più domestico abbastanza quietamente a volte; ma il punto vitale è che essi aprivano le porte. Oppure si potrebbe dire che Jane Eyre e la donna pazza vivevano nella stessa oscura e labirintica casa del mistero, ma che per la maniaca tutte le porte si aprivano di continuo verso l’interno, mentre per l’eroina tutte le porte, una dopo l’altra, si aprivano verso l’esterno, verso il sole.
Uno di questi valori universali nel caso di Charlotte Brontë è la luce che ella getta su una fallacia estetica assai di moda: il contrasto troppo reiterato tra realismo e romanzesco. Se ne parla come se fossero due tipi alternativi d’arte, e talvolta persino come se fossero due direzioni antagoniste di obbligo spirituale. Ma in verità sono cose in due diverse categorie; e, come tutte le cose siffatte, possono esistere insieme, o separate, o in qualsiasi grado di combinazione. Il romanzesco è uno spirito; e quanto al realismo, è una convenzione. Dire che qualche opera letteraria è realistica, non romanzesca, è inconseguente quanto l’uomo che una volta mi disse: «Gli Irlandesi sono di cuore caldo, non logici». Egli, in ogni caso, non era logico, o avrebbe visto che la sua affermazione era come dire che qualcuno era dai capelli rossi piuttosto che atletico.
Non c’è ragione per cui un uomo con forte capacità di ragionamento non debba avere forti affetti; ed è mia esperienza, semmai, che l’uomo che sa argomentare con chiarezza in astratto generalmente ha una generosità di sangue e d’istinti. Ma può non averla, poiché le cose stanno in categorie diverse. Questo caso di un errore riguardo agli Irlandesi ha qualche applicazione al caso individuale di Charlotte Brontë, che era irlandese di sangue, e in un certo senso tanto più irlandese per essere stata cresciuta nello Yorkshire. Un mio amico irlandese, che soffre il medesimo esilio nel medesimo ambiente, una volta mi fece l’osservazione suggestiva che i torreggianti e ipermascolini barbari e lunatici che dominano i romanzi delle Brontë rappresentano semplicemente l’impressione prodotta dalle maniere piuttosto vanagloriose dello Yorkshire sul temperamento irlandese più civile e sensibile. Ma l’applicazione più ampia è che il romanzesco è un’atmosfera, distinta come una dimensione separata, che coesiste con e permea l’intera opera di Charlotte Brontë; ed è ugualmente presente in tutti i suoi considerevoli trionfi di realismo, e nei suoi trionfi ancora maggiori di irrealtà.
Il realismo è una convenzione, come ho detto; è generalmente questione di forma artistica esterna, quando non è questione di mera moda o convenienza, fino a che punto i particolari della vita siano dati, o fino a che punto siano i particolari della vita che meglio conosciamo. Può essere piuttosto più difficile descrivere un cavallo alato che un cavallo da guerra; ma dopotutto è tanto facile contare piume quanto contare peli; è tanto facile e tanto noioso. La storia di un eroe in cui i peli del suo cavallo fossero tutti contati non sarebbe affatto una storia; la linea va tracciata assai prima che si giunga a qualcosa come la realtà letterale; e la questione se diamo al cavallo le sue ali, o ci prendiamo persino la briga di menzionarne il colore, è meramente una questione della forma artistica che abbiamo scelto. È la questione tra fondere un cavallo in bronzo o scolpirlo nel marmo; non la questione di descrivere un cavallo ai fini di uno zoologo o ai fini di un allibratore. Ma lo spirito dell’opera è tutt’altra cosa. Opere della più selvaggia fantasticheria nella forma possono essere colme di uno spirito razionalistico e persino sobrio; come lo sono alcune opere di Luciano, di Swift e di Voltaire. D’altro canto, descrizioni degli ambienti più monotoni, narrate con la più casalinga intimità, possono essere trapassate da parte a parte dalla più ricca intensità, non solo dello spirito del sentimento ma dello spirito dell’avventura.
Pochi si sentiranno spinti a chiamare la casa del signor Rochester un ambiente monotono, ma non è meno vero che Charlotte Brontë sa colmare le stanze e gli angoli più quieti con un romanzesco psicologico che è questione più di temperatura che di tempo o di luogo. Dopotutto, il trattamento partecipe del signor Rochester in Jane Eyre non è intrinsecamente più romanzesco e persino esagerativo del trattamento partecipe del signor Paul Emanuel in Villette; benché il primo possa essere superficialmente una sorta di demonio e il secondo più nella natura di un folletto. Presentare il signor Emanuel in modo partecipe era già di per sé qualcosa di un’ardua e cavalleresca avventura. E Charlotte Brontë fu cavalleresca in questo senso perfettamente serio; forse in un senso troppo serio, poiché ella pagò la realtà arroventata del suo romanzesco con una certa insufficienza di umorismo. Fu avventurosa, ma in un modo intensamente individualistico e perciò intensamente femmineo.
È la cosa più femminile in lei che possiamo pensarla come una cavaliera errante, ma difficilmente come una di un ordine o di una tavola rotonda di cavalieri erranti. Thackeray disse che ella gli ricordava Giovanna d’Arco. Ma è uno degli elementi affascinanti nel lungo romanzo della Cristianità che figure come Giovanna d’Arco abbiano un’esistenza nella realtà. Questa visione della vergine solitaria, avventurosa e in armi, è assai antica nella letteratura e nella mitologia europea; e lo spirito di essa accompagnò la piccola governante lungo le strade verso l’oscura magione della follia come verso il castello di un orco. La medesima regola era corsa come un filo d’argento attraverso i purpurei arazzi dell’Ariosto; e possiamo di buon grado salutare nella nostra grande compatriota, specialmente in mezzo al più grande poema epico del nostro paese, qualcosa di quella nobiltà che è nel nome stesso di Britomart.
PART THREE: THOUGHT AND BELIEF
ANTI-RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
By G.K. Chesterton
Originally a contribution to An Outline of Christianity; the Story of our Civilization. Vol. IV. Christianity and Modern Thought, 1926. The Waverley Book Co., London
THE ECLIPSE of Christian theology during the rationalist advance of the eighteenth century is one of the most interesting of historical episodes. In order to see it clearly, we must first realize that it was an episode and that it is now historical. It may be stating it too strongly to say that it is now dead; it is perhaps enough to say that it is now distant and yet distinct; that it is divided from our own time as much as any period of the past. Neither reason nor faith will ever die; for men would die if deprived of either. The wildest mystic uses his reason at some stage; if it be only by reasoning against reason. The most incisive sceptic has dogmas of his own; though when he is a very incisive sceptic, he has often forgotten what they are. Faith and reason are in this sense co-eternal; but as the words are popularly used, as loose labels for particular periods, the one is now almost as remote as the other. What was called the Age of Reason has vanished as completely as what are called the Ages of Faith.
It is essential to see this fact first, because if we do not see its limitations we do not see its outline. It has nothing to do with which period we prefer, or even which we think right. A rationalist is quite entitled to look back to the eighteenth century as a golden age of good sense, as the medievalist looks back to the thirteenth century as a golden age of good faith. But he must look back, and look back across an abyss. We may like or dislike the atmosphere of the modern world, with its intense interest in anything that is called psychological, and in much that is called psychical. We may think that speculation has gone more deep or that it has grown more morbid. We may like or dislike the religions of faith-healing or spirit-rapping; or a hundred other manifestations of the same mood, in fields quite remote from the supernatural or even the spiritual. We may like or dislike, for instance, that vast modern belief in “the power of suggestion” expressed in advertising or publicity and educational methods of all sorts. We may like or dislike the appeal to the non-rational element; the perpetual talk about the Sub-conscious Mind or the Race Memory or the Herd Instinct. We may deplore or we may admire all these developments. But we must fix it in our minds as a historical fact that to any one of the great ‘Infidels’ or Freethinkers of the eighteenth century, this whole modern world of ours would seem a mere madhouse. He might almost be driven, in pursuit of the reasonable, to take refuge in a monastery.
We are dealing therefore with an episode and even an interlude; though the man who likes it has as much right to say that it was an hour of happy daylight between the storms as a Christian has to say it of primitive Christianity or medieval Christendom. From about the time that Dryden died a Catholic to about the time that Newman began to write a little less like a Protestant, there was a period during which the spirit of philosophy filling men’s minds was not positively Protestant any more than it was positively Catholic. It was rationalist even in Protestants and Catholics; in a Catholic like Pope or a Protestant like Paley. But it can be seen at the clearest when the last clinging traditions or presences were dropped; when the most stolid specimen of the Protestant middle classes is found busily scribbling sneers in the footnotes and even the index of a great history of the Fall of Rome; when a brilliant pupil going forth out of the Jesuit seminary turns back over his shoulder the terrible face of Voltaire.
In order to exhibit the essential quality, let us first compare the period with that which preceded it. Touching its historical causes, no man with a sense of human complexity will offer anything but contributory causes. But I think there are contributory causes that have been strangely overlooked. On the face of it, it refers back to the Renaissance, which refers back to the old pagan world. On the face of it, it also refers back to the Reformation, though chiefly in its negative aspect or branch in the old Christian world. But both these things are connected with a third, that has not, I think, been adequately realized. And that is a feeling which can only be called futility. It arose out of the disproportion between the dangers and agonies of the religious wars and the really unreasonable compromise in which they ended; “cujus regio ejus religio”: which may be translated, “Let every State establish its State Church”, but which did mean in the Renaissance epoch, “Let the Prince do what he likes.”
The seventeenth century ended with a note of interrogation. Pope, the poet of reason, whom some thought too reasonable to be poetical, was once compared to a question mark, because he was a crooked little thing that asked questions. The seventeenth century was not little, but it was in some ways crooked, in the sense of crabbed. But anyhow it began with the ferocious controversies of the Puritans and it ended with a question. It was an open question, but it was also an open wound. It was not only that the end of the seventeenth century was of all epochs the most inconclusive. It was also, it must be remembered, inconclusive upon a point which people had always hoped to see concluded. To use the literal sense of the word ‘conclude’, they expected the wound to close. We naturally tend to miss this point today. We have had nearly four hundred years of divided Christianity and have grown used to it; and it is the Reunion of Christendom that we think of as the extraordinary event. But they still thought the Disunion of Christendom an extraordinary event. Neither side had ever really expected it to remain in a state of Disunion. All their traditions for a thousand years were of some sort of union coming out of controversy, ever since a united religion had spread all over a united Roman Empire. From a Protestant standpoint, the natural thing was for Protestantism to conquer Europe as Christianity had conquered Europe. In that case the success of the counter-Reformation would be only the last leap of a dying flame like the last stand of Julian the Apostate. From a Catholic standpoint the natural thing was for Catholicism to reconquer Europe, as it had more than once reconquered Europe; in that case the Protestant would be like the Albigensians: a passing element ultimately reabsorbed. But neither of these natural things happened. Prussia and the other Protestant principalities fought against Austria as the heir of the Holy Roman Empire in the Thirty Years War. They fought each other to a standstill. It was utterly and obviously hopeless to make Austria Protestant or Prussia Roman Catholic. And from the moment when that fact was realized the nature of the whole world was changed. The rock had been cloven and would not close up again, and in the crack or chasm a new sort of strange and prickly weed began to grow. The open wound festered.
PARTE TERZA: PENSIERO E FEDE
IL PENSIERO ANTIRELIGIOSO NEL SECOLO DICIOTTESIMO
Di G.K. Chesterton
In origine un contributo a An Outline of Christianity; the Story of our Civilization. Vol. IV. Christianity and Modern Thought, 1926. The Waverley Book Co., Londra
L’ECLISSI della teologia cristiana durante l’avanzata razionalista del secolo diciottesimo è uno degli episodi storici più interessanti. Per vederla con chiarezza, dobbiamo anzitutto renderci conto che fu un episodio e che ormai è cosa storica. Può essere dir troppo affermare che ormai è morta; forse basta dire che ormai è lontana e tuttavia distinta; che è separata dal nostro tempo quanto qualsiasi altra epoca del passato. Né la ragione né la fede moriranno mai; poiché gli uomini morirebbero se privati dell’una o dell’altra. Il mistico più sfrenato usa la propria ragione a un certo stadio; non fosse che ragionando contro la ragione. Lo scettico più tagliente ha dogmi propri; benché, quando è uno scettico molto tagliente, abbia spesso dimenticato quali essi siano. Fede e ragione sono in questo senso coeterne; ma nell’uso popolare delle parole, come vaghe etichette per periodi particolari, l’una è ormai remota quasi quanto l’altra. Ciò che fu chiamato l’Età della Ragione è svanito tanto completamente quanto ciò che vengono chiamate le Età della Fede.
È essenziale cogliere anzitutto questo fatto, perché se non ne vediamo i limiti non ne vediamo il contorno. Non ha nulla a che fare con quale periodo preferiamo, o persino con quale riteniamo giusto. Un razionalista ha pieno diritto di guardare indietro al secolo diciottesimo come a un’età dell’oro del buon senso, come il medievalista guarda indietro al secolo tredicesimo come a un’età dell’oro della buona fede. Ma egli deve guardare indietro, e guardare indietro attraverso un abisso. Possiamo amare o detestare l’atmosfera del mondo moderno, con il suo intenso interesse per tutto ciò che viene chiamato psicologico, e per molto di ciò che viene chiamato psichico. Possiamo pensare che la speculazione sia andata più a fondo o che si sia fatta più morbosa. Possiamo amare o detestare le religioni della guarigione tramite fede o dei colpi degli spiriti; o cento altre manifestazioni del medesimo umore, in campi assai remoti dal soprannaturale o persino dallo spirituale. Possiamo amare o detestare, per esempio, quella vasta credenza moderna nel «potere della suggestione» espressa nella pubblicità o nella réclame e nei metodi educativi di ogni sorta. Possiamo amare o detestare l’appello all’elemento non razionale; il perpetuo discorrere della Mente Subcosciente o della Memoria della Razza o dell’Istinto del Gregge. Possiamo deplorare o possiamo ammirare tutti questi sviluppi. Ma dobbiamo fissarci nella mente, come fatto storico, che a qualunque dei grandi ‘Infedeli’ o Liberi Pensatori del secolo diciottesimo tutto questo nostro mondo moderno apparirebbe un puro manicomio. Egli potrebbe quasi essere spinto, in cerca del ragionevole, a rifugiarsi in un monastero.
Abbiamo dunque a che fare con un episodio e persino con un intermezzo; benché l’uomo cui esso piace abbia tanto diritto di dire che fu un’ora di lieta luce del giorno tra le tempeste quanto un cristiano ne ha di dirlo del cristianesimo primitivo o della cristianità medievale. Da circa il tempo in cui Dryden morì cattolico a circa il tempo in cui Newman cominciò a scrivere un poco meno da protestante, vi fu un periodo durante il quale lo spirito della filosofia che riempiva le menti degli uomini non era positivamente protestante più di quanto fosse positivamente cattolico. Era razionalista persino nei protestanti e nei cattolici; in un cattolico come Pope o in un protestante come Paley. Ma lo si può vedere nel modo più chiaro quando furono lasciate cadere le ultime tradizioni o presenze aggrappate; quando il più imperturbabile esemplare della classe media protestante lo si trova a scarabocchiare indaffarato sarcasmi nelle note a piè di pagina e persino nell’indice di una grande storia della Caduta di Roma; quando un brillante allievo, uscendo dal seminario gesuita, volge indietro sopra la spalla il terribile volto di Voltaire.
Per mettere in luce la qualità essenziale, confrontiamo dapprima il periodo con quello che lo precedette. Quanto alle sue cause storiche, nessun uomo dotato del senso della complessità umana offrirà se non cause concorrenti. Ma penso che vi siano cause concorrenti che sono state stranamente trascurate. In apparenza, esso rimanda al Rinascimento, che rimanda all’antico mondo pagano. In apparenza, rimanda anche alla Riforma, benché principalmente nel suo aspetto o ramo negativo entro il vecchio mondo cristiano. Ma entrambe queste cose sono connesse con una terza, che non è stata, credo, adeguatamente compresa. E cioè un sentimento che può essere chiamato soltanto futilità. Esso sorse dalla sproporzione tra i pericoli e le agonie delle guerre di religione e il compromesso davvero irragionevole in cui esse si conclusero; «cujus regio ejus religio»: che si può tradurre «Ogni Stato istituisca la propria Chiesa di Stato», ma che nell’epoca rinascimentale significava «Faccia il Principe ciò che gli pare».
Il secolo diciassettesimo si chiuse con un punto interrogativo. Pope, il poeta della ragione, che alcuni giudicavano troppo ragionevole per essere poetico, fu una volta paragonato a un punto di domanda, perché era una piccola cosa storta che poneva domande. Il secolo diciassettesimo non era piccolo, ma era per certi versi storto, nel senso di arcigno. Ma comunque cominciò con le feroci controversie dei Puritani e finì con una domanda. Era una questione aperta, ma era anche una ferita aperta. Non era soltanto che la fine del secolo diciassettesimo fosse fra tutte le epoche la più inconcludente. Era anche, va ricordato, inconcludente su un punto che la gente aveva sempre sperato di veder concluso. Per usare il senso letterale della parola ‘concludere’, essi si aspettavano che la ferita si chiudesse. Noi tendiamo naturalmente a mancare questo punto oggi. Abbiamo avuto quasi quattrocento anni di cristianesimo diviso e ci siamo abituati; ed è la Riunione della Cristianità che pensiamo come l’evento straordinario. Ma essi ancora pensavano la Disunione della Cristianità un evento straordinario. Nessuna delle due parti si era mai davvero aspettata che rimanesse in uno stato di Disunione. Tutte le loro tradizioni per mille anni erano di qualche sorta di unione che esce dalla controversia, fin da quando una religione unita si era diffusa per tutto un Impero Romano unito. Da un punto di vista protestante, la cosa naturale era che il Protestantesimo conquistasse l’Europa come il Cristianesimo aveva conquistato l’Europa. In tal caso il successo della Controriforma sarebbe stato soltanto l’ultimo guizzo di una fiamma morente, come l’ultima resistenza di Giuliano l’Apostata. Da un punto di vista cattolico, la cosa naturale era che il Cattolicesimo riconquistasse l’Europa, come più di una volta aveva riconquistato l’Europa; in tal caso il protestante sarebbe stato come gli Albigesi: un elemento passeggero infine riassorbito. Ma nessuna di queste cose naturali accadde. La Prussia e gli altri principati protestanti combatterono contro l’Austria in quanto erede del Sacro Romano Impero nella Guerra dei Trent’Anni. Si combatterono a vicenda fino allo stallo. Era del tutto e manifestamente disperato rendere protestante l’Austria o cattolica romana la Prussia. E dal momento in cui quel fatto fu compreso, la natura del mondo intero mutò. La roccia era stata spaccata e non si sarebbe più richiusa, e nella crepa o voragine cominciò a crescere una nuova sorta di erbaccia strana e spinosa. La ferita aperta suppurò.
We have all heard it said that the Renaissance was produced or precipitated by the Fall of Constantinople. It is true in a sense perhaps more subtle than is meant. It was not merely that it let loose the scholars from the Byzantine Court. It was also that it let loose the sceptical thoughts of the scholars, and of a good many other people when they saw this last turn of the tide in the interminable strife between Christ and Mahomet. The war between Islam and Christendom had been inconclusive. The war between the Reformation and the counter-Reformation was inconclusive. And I for one fancy that the former fact had a good deal to do with the full sceptical expansion of the eighteenth century. When men saw the Crescent and the Cross tossed up alternately as a juggler tosses balls, it was difficult for many not to think that one might be about as good or bad as the other when they saw the Protestant and the Catholic go up and down on the seesaw of the Thirty Years War. Many were disposed to suspect that it was six to one and half-a-dozen to the other. This addition involved an immense subtraction; and two religions came to much less than one. Many began to think that, as they could not both be true, they might both be false. When that thought had crossed the mind the reign of the rationalist had begun.
The thought, as an individual thought, had of course begun long before. It is, in fact, as old as the world; and it is quite obviously as old as the Renaissance. In that sense the father of the modern world is Montaigne; that detached and distinguished intelligence which, as Stevenson said, saw that men would soon find as much to quarrel with in the Bible as they had in the Church. Erasmus and Rabelais and even Cervantes had their part; but in these giants there was still a great gusto of subconscious conviction, still Christian; they mocked at the lives of men, but not at the life of man. But Montaigne was something more revolutionary than a revolutionist; he was a relativist. He would have told Cervantes that his knight was not far wrong in thinking puppets were men, since men are really puppets. He would have said that windmills were as much giants as anything else; and that giants would be dwarfs if set beside taller giants. This doubt, some would say this poison in its original purity, did begin to work under the surface of society from the time of Montaigne onwards and worked more and more towards the surface as the war of religions grew more and more inconclusive. There went with it a spirit that may truly be called humane. But we must always remember that even its refreshing humanity had a negative as well as a positive side. When people are no longer in the mood to be heroic, after all, it is only human to be humane. Some men were really tolerant, but others were merely tired. When people are tired of the subject, they generally agree to differ.
But against this clear mood, as against a quiet evening sky, there stood up the stark and dreadful outlines of the old dogmatic and militant institutions. Institutions are machines; they go on working under any sky and against any mood. And the clue to the next phase is the revolt against their revolting incongruity. The engines of war, the engines of torture, that had belonged to the violent crises of the old creeds, remained rigid and repellent; all the more mysterious for being old and sometimes even all the more hideous for being idle. Men in that mellow mood of doubt had no way of understanding the fanaticism and the martyrdom of their fathers. They knew nothing of medieval history or of what a united Christendon had once meant to men. They were like children horrified at the sight of a battlefield.
Take the determining example of the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition was Spy Fever. It produced the sort of horrors such fevers produce; to some extent even in modern wars. The Spaniards had reconquered Spain from Islam with a glowing endurance and defiance as great as any virtue ever shown by man; but they had the darker side of such warfare; they were always struggling to deracinate a Jewish plot which they believed to be always selling them to the enemy. Of this dark tale of perverted patriotism the humanitarians knew nothing. All they knew was that the Inquisition was still going on. And suddenly the great Voltaire rose up and shattered it with a hammer of savage laughter. It may seem strange to compare Voltaire to a child. But it is true that though he was right in hating and destroying it, he never knew what it was that he had destroyed.
There was born in that hour a certain spirit, which the Christian spirit should be large enough to cover and understand. In relation to many things it was healthy, though in relation to some things it was shallow. We may be allowed to associate it with the jolly uncle who does not believe in ghosts. It had an honourable expression in the squires and parsons who put down the persecution of witches. The uncle is not always just to Spiritualists; but he is rather a comfort on a dark night. The squire did not know all there is to know about diabolism, but he did stop many diabolical fears of diabolism. And if we are to understand history, that is humanity, we must sympathize with this breezy interlude in which it seemed natural for humanity to be humane.
The mention of the squire is not irrelevant; there was in that humanity something of unconscious aristocracy. One of the respects in which the rational epoch was immeasurably superior to our own was in the radiant patience with which it would follow a train of thought. But it is only fair to say that in this logic there was something of leisure, and indeed we must not forget how much of the first rational reform of the age came from above. It was a time of despots who were also deists or even, like Frederick the Great, practically atheists. But Frederick was sometimes humanitarian if he was never human. Joseph of Austria, offending his people by renouncing religious persecution, was very like a squire offending the village by repressing witch-burning. But in considering the virtues of the age, we must not forget that it had a very fine ideal of honourable poverty; the Stoic idea of Jefferson and Robespierre. It also believed in hard work, and worked very hard in the details of reform. A man like Bentham toiled with ceaseless tenacity in attacking abuse after abuse. But people hardly realized that his utilitarianism was creating the new troubles of Capitalism, any more than that Frederick of Prussia was making the problem of modern militarism.
Abbiamo tutti sentito dire che il Rinascimento fu prodotto o precipitato dalla Caduta di Costantinopoli. È vero in un senso forse più sottile di quanto s’intenda. Non fu soltanto che essa liberò gli studiosi dalla Corte bizantina. Fu anche che liberò i pensieri scettici degli studiosi, e di molte altre persone, quando videro quest’ultimo volgersi della marea nell’interminabile lotta tra Cristo e Maometto. La guerra tra l’Islam e la Cristianità era stata inconcludente. La guerra tra la Riforma e la Controriforma fu inconcludente. E io, per parte mia, immagino che il primo fatto abbia avuto molto a che fare con la piena espansione scettica del Settecento. Quando gli uomini videro la Mezzaluna e la Croce lanciate in aria alternativamente come un giocoliere lancia le palle, fu difficile per molti non pensare che l’una potesse valere all’incirca quanto l’altra, nel bene e nel male, quando videro il protestante e il cattolico salire e scendere sull’altalena della Guerra dei Trent’anni. Molti erano disposti a sospettare che fosse sei di qua e mezza dozzina di là. Questa addizione comportava un’immensa sottrazione; e due religioni finirono per valere assai meno di una. Molti cominciarono a pensare che, poiché non potevano essere entrambe vere, potevano anche essere entrambe false. Quando quel pensiero ebbe attraversato la mente, il regno del razionalista era cominciato.
Il pensiero, come pensiero individuale, era naturalmente cominciato molto prima. Esso è, di fatto, antico quanto il mondo; ed è con tutta evidenza antico quanto il Rinascimento. In tal senso il padre del mondo moderno è Montaigne; quell’intelligenza distaccata e distinta che, come disse Stevenson, vide come gli uomini avrebbero presto trovato tanto da ridire nella Bibbia quanto ne avevano trovato nella Chiesa. Erasmo e Rabelais e persino Cervantes ebbero la loro parte; ma in questi giganti vi era ancora un grande gusto di convinzione subconscia, ancora cristiana; essi si facevano beffe delle vite degli uomini, ma non della vita dell’uomo. Ma Montaigne fu qualcosa di più rivoluzionario di un rivoluzionario; fu un relativista. Avrebbe detto a Cervantes che il suo cavaliere non aveva poi tanto torto a credere che i burattini fossero uomini, poiché gli uomini sono in realtà burattini. Avrebbe detto che i mulini a vento erano giganti tanto quanto qualsiasi altra cosa; e che i giganti sarebbero stati nani se posti accanto a giganti più alti. Questo dubbio, che alcuni chiamerebbero questo veleno nella sua purezza originaria, cominciò davvero a operare sotto la superficie della società a partire dal tempo di Montaigne, e operò sempre più verso la superficie via via che la guerra delle religioni si faceva sempre più inconcludente. Ad esso si accompagnava uno spirito che può davvero dirsi umano. Ma dobbiamo sempre ricordare che persino la sua rinfrescante umanità aveva un lato negativo oltre che positivo. Quando la gente non è più in vena di essere eroica, dopotutto, è solo umano essere umani. Alcuni uomini erano davvero tolleranti, ma altri erano semplicemente stanchi. Quando la gente è stanca dell’argomento, generalmente conviene di dissentire.
Ma contro questo sereno stato d’animo, come contro un quieto cielo serale, si ergevano i profili crudi e terribili delle vecchie istituzioni dogmatiche e militanti. Le istituzioni sono macchine; continuano a funzionare sotto qualsiasi cielo e contro qualsiasi stato d’animo. E la chiave della fase successiva è la rivolta contro la loro rivoltante incongruità. Le macchine da guerra, gli strumenti di tortura, che erano appartenuti alle violente crisi dei vecchi credi, rimanevano rigidi e repellenti; tanto più misteriosi in quanto vecchi e talvolta persino tanto più orrendi in quanto inoperosi. Gli uomini, in quello stato d’animo mite di dubbio, non avevano modo di comprendere il fanatismo e il martirio dei loro padri. Non sapevano nulla della storia medievale, né di ciò che una Cristianità unita aveva un tempo significato per gli uomini. Erano come bambini inorriditi alla vista di un campo di battaglia.
Si prenda l’esempio determinante dell’Inquisizione spagnola. L’Inquisizione spagnola fu febbre da spie. Produsse quel genere di orrori che tali febbri producono; in qualche misura persino nelle guerre moderne. Gli spagnoli avevano riconquistato la Spagna all’Islam con una fervida costanza e sfida grande quanto qualsiasi virtù mai mostrata dall’uomo; ma ebbero il lato più oscuro di una simile guerra; lottavano di continuo per sradicare un complotto ebraico che credevano li stesse sempre vendendo al nemico. Di questa oscura vicenda di patriottismo pervertito gli umanitari non sapevano nulla. Tutto ciò che sapevano era che l’Inquisizione era ancora in corso. E d’improvviso il grande Voltaire si levò e la frantumò con un martello di feroce riso. Può sembrare strano paragonare Voltaire a un bambino. Ma è vero che, benché avesse ragione a odiarla e a distruggerla, egli non seppe mai che cosa fosse ciò che aveva distrutto.
Nacque in quell’ora un certo spirito, che lo spirito cristiano dovrebbe essere abbastanza ampio da contenere e comprendere. In rapporto a molte cose era sano, benché in rapporto ad alcune fosse superficiale. Ci sia concesso di associarlo allo zio gioviale che non crede ai fantasmi. Ebbe un’onorevole espressione negli squire e nei parroci che posero fine alla persecuzione delle streghe. Lo zio non è sempre giusto verso gli spiritisti; ma è piuttosto un conforto in una notte buia. Lo squire non sapeva tutto ciò che c’è da sapere sul diabolismo, ma fermò davvero molte diaboliche paure del diabolismo. E se vogliamo comprendere la storia, cioè l’umanità, dobbiamo simpatizzare con questo arioso interludio in cui parve naturale all’umanità essere umana.
La menzione dello squire non è irrilevante; vi era in quell’umanità qualcosa di un’aristocrazia inconsapevole. Uno degli aspetti in cui l’epoca razionale fu incommensurabilmente superiore alla nostra fu la radiosa pazienza con cui seguiva un filo di pensiero. Ma è giusto dire che in questa logica vi era qualcosa dell’agio, e invero non dobbiamo dimenticare quanta parte della prima riforma razionale dell’epoca venne dall’alto. Fu un tempo di despoti che erano anche deisti o persino, come Federico il Grande, praticamente atei. Ma Federico era talvolta umanitario, se pure non fu mai umano. Giuseppe d’Austria, che offese il suo popolo rinunciando alla persecuzione religiosa, somigliava molto a uno squire che offende il villaggio reprimendo il rogo delle streghe. Ma nel considerare le virtù di quell’epoca, non dobbiamo dimenticare che essa ebbe un ideale assai nobile di onorevole povertà; l’idea stoica di Jefferson e Robespierre. Credeva anche nel duro lavoro, e lavorò assai duramente nei dettagli della riforma. Un uomo come Bentham si affannò con incessante tenacia ad attaccare abuso dopo abuso. Ma la gente a stento si rese conto che il suo utilitarismo stava creando i nuovi guai del Capitalismo, non più di quanto si rendesse conto che Federico di Prussia stava creando il problema del militarismo moderno.
Perhaps the perfect moment of every mortal thing is short, even of mortal things dealing with immortal, as was the best moment of the Early Church or the Middle Ages. Anyhow the best moment of rationalism was very short. Things always overlap, and Bentham and Jefferson inherited from something that had already passed its prime. Not for long did man remain in that state of really sane and sunny negation. For instance, having covered the period with the great name of Voltaire, I may well be expected to add the name of Rousseau. But even in passing from one name to the other, we feel a fine shade of change which is not mere progression. The rationalist movement is tinged with the romantic movement, which is to lead men back as well as forward. They are asked to believe in the General Will, that is the soul of the people; a mystery. By the time the French Revolution is passed, it is elemental that things are loose that have not been rationalized. Danton has said, “It is treason to the people to take away the dream”. Napoleon has been crowned, like Charlemagne, by a Pope. And when the dregs of Diderot’s bitterness were reached; when they dragged the Goddess of Reason in triumph through Notre Dame, the smouldering Gothic images could look down on that orgy more serenely then than when Voltaire began to write; awaiting their hour. The age was ended when these men thought it was beginning. Their own mystical maenad frenzy was enough to prove it: the goddess of Reason was dead.
One word may be added, to link up the age with many other ages. It will be noted that it is not true, as many suppose, that the rational attack on Christianity came from the modern discoveries in material science. It had already come, in a sense it had already come and gone, before these discoveries really began. They were pursued persistently partly through a tradition that already existed. But men were not rationalistic because they were scientists. Rather they became scientists because they were rationalists. Here as everywhere the soul of man went first, even when it denied itself.
THE CAMP AND THE CATHEDRAL
IT MUST always be something of a problem how far the private amateur may venture merely to guess that the professional specialist is mistaken. On the other hand it is quite certain that the man who knows most about a thing is often quite wrong about it. He is often quite wrong in fact, and still more wrong in spirit. On the other hand, the fact that the learned man has lost humility is no reason why the unlearned man also should lose that humorous and healthy gift. On the whole, I think the test of the question is in the size and simplicity of the mistake. It depends on whether the scholar is blind to something because it is too small to be seen, or because it is too large to be seen. I cannot draw the learned man’s attention to something recondite, for he knows far more of such obscure details than I do. But I may sometimes draw his attention to something obvious, for that is the sort of thing that the learned man has a way of falling over in the street.
History is the only hobby in which I have dabbled even in this tentative fashion; and it is to history that I should specially apply the test. I mean the test of whether the truth has been missed because it is small and hidden, or actually because it is big and plain. Cobbett, for instance, was an amateur historian in somewhat the same sense, though less amateurish than myself. And when he was right, as I think he generally was, it was because he had an eye for large and obvious things. His eye went across a great landscape like a bird, and was master of the lie of the land. Thus his broadest deduction was simply from the big churches in England, and especially from the very fact of their bigness. It was a fact filling the sky; a thing whose shadow lay at evening on the whole landscape. But it never seems to have occurred to anybody but Cobbett at that time, to ask whether a sparse remnant of ignorant savages were likely to have raised a sort of sacred tower of Babel to the stars, in half the hamlets of England.
The obscurantism of the Reformation, and the rationalists who were its heirs, was in this way quite unique. Nobody before or since ever kept a people quite so much in darkness as those who put out all the candles in the sixteenth century. In this, for instance, the anti-Catholic reaction in the sixteenth century was quite different from the first Catholic movement in the fourth or fifth century. The Early Christians had a great moral horror of the last phase of the great civilization of Rome; but they never attempted to pretend that it was not a great civilization, or that it had not been made by Rome. Their moral horror was in most matters justified; in some matters considerably exaggerated. But in its wildest exaggerations of fanaticism, it never talks as if the heathen had not built bridges or produced poetry. They did not call the classical architecture the Vandal architecture, as if it had been built only by the barbarians who destroyed it. Yet that would have been a parallel to the very word ‘Gothic’ which we are still compelled by custom to use. The medieval world did not talk about Plato and Cicero as fools occupied with futilities; yet that is exactly how a more modern world talked of the philosophy of Aquinas and sometimes even of the purely philosophic parts of Dante. The Christians recognized an awful spiritual chasm dividing them from their great ancestors; but they recognized that their ancestors were great. At no moment in all those two thousand years was the legend lost that Virgil was something magnificent, whether as a magician in the Dark Ages or a model classic in the Middle Ages. In religion and morals there had indeed been a shuddering recoil; but it was a recoil from over-civilization, not a complacent contempt for savagery. They thought the Coliseum had been the arena of bestial abominations; of beasts, employed by men in a spirit too base to be called beastly; and so it had. But they did not think the Coliseum had been made by beasts; or look at its labyrinth of arches with contemptuous curiosity, as at the rude instinctive architecture of an ant-hill. In all that mixture of regret and pain and fascination, with which paganism has haunted the Christian centuries, there was never a touch of the innocent vulgarity with which even the Victorians sometimes talked of monks as if they were monkeys.
Forse il momento perfetto di ogni cosa mortale è breve, persino delle cose mortali che trattano con l’immortale, come fu il momento migliore della Chiesa antica o del Medioevo. Comunque il momento migliore del razionalismo fu assai breve. Le cose si sovrappongono sempre, e Bentham e Jefferson ereditarono da qualcosa che aveva già oltrepassato il suo apice. Non a lungo l’uomo rimase in quello stato di negazione davvero sana e solare. Per esempio, avendo coperto il periodo con il gran nome di Voltaire, ci si potrà ben aspettare che io aggiunga il nome di Rousseau. Ma persino nel passare dall’uno all’altro nome, avvertiamo una sottile sfumatura di cambiamento che non è mera progressione. Il movimento razionalista è tinto dal movimento romantico, che condurrà gli uomini indietro non meno che avanti. Si chiede loro di credere nella Volontà Generale, cioè nell’anima del popolo; un mistero. Quando la Rivoluzione francese è passata, è ormai elementare che siano sciolte cose che non sono state razionalizzate. Danton ha detto: «È tradimento verso il popolo togliergli il sogno». Napoleone è stato incoronato, come Carlomagno, da un Papa. E quando furono raggiunte le fecce dell’amarezza di Diderot; quando trascinarono in trionfo la Dea della Ragione per Notre Dame, le fumanti immagini gotiche poterono guardare dall’alto quell’orgia più serenamente allora di quando Voltaire cominciò a scrivere; in attesa della propria ora. L’età era finita quando questi uomini credevano che cominciasse. La loro stessa mistica frenesia da menadi bastava a provarlo: la dea della Ragione era morta.
Si può aggiungere una parola, per collegare l’età a molte altre età. Si noterà che non è vero, come molti suppongono, che l’attacco razionale al Cristianesimo provenisse dalle moderne scoperte della scienza materiale. Esso era già venuto, in un certo senso era già venuto e andato, prima che quelle scoperte davvero cominciassero. Esse furono perseguite con insistenza in parte per una tradizione che già esisteva. Ma gli uomini non erano razionalisti perché erano scienziati. Piuttosto divennero scienziati perché erano razionalisti. Qui come ovunque l’anima dell’uomo andò per prima, persino quando negava sé stessa.
L’ACCAMPAMENTO E LA CATTEDRALE
DEVE sempre essere un certo problema fino a che punto il semplice dilettante possa azzardarsi a supporre che lo specialista di professione si sbagli. D’altra parte è del tutto certo che l’uomo che sa di più su una cosa ha spesso perfettamente torto su di essa. Ha spesso perfettamente torto nei fatti, e ancor più torto nello spirito. D’altra parte, il fatto che l’uomo dotto abbia perduto l’umiltà non è ragione perché anche l’uomo indotto debba perdere quel dono umoristico e salutare. Nel complesso, credo che la prova della questione stia nella grandezza e semplicità dell’errore. Dipende dal se lo studioso sia cieco a qualcosa perché è troppo piccola per essere vista, o perché è troppo grande per essere vista. Non posso richiamare l’attenzione dell’uomo dotto su qualcosa di recondito, poiché egli sa assai più di me di simili dettagli oscuri. Ma posso talvolta richiamare la sua attenzione su qualcosa di ovvio, poiché quello è il genere di cosa in cui l’uomo dotto ha l’abitudine di inciampare per strada.
La storia è l’unico passatempo in cui mi sia dilettato anche solo in questa maniera tentativa; ed è alla storia che dovrei applicare in modo speciale la prova. Intendo la prova del se la verità sia stata mancata perché è piccola e nascosta, oppure proprio perché è grande e palese. Cobbett, per esempio, era uno storico dilettante in un senso alquanto simile, benché meno dilettantesco di me. E quando aveva ragione, come credo generalmente avesse, era perché aveva occhio per le cose grandi e ovvie. Il suo occhio percorreva un vasto paesaggio come un uccello, ed era padrone della conformazione del terreno. Così la sua deduzione più ampia derivava semplicemente dalle grandi chiese d’Inghilterra, e specialmente dal fatto stesso della loro grandezza. Era un fatto che riempiva il cielo; una cosa la cui ombra la sera si stendeva su tutto il paesaggio. Ma non pare mai essere venuto in mente a nessuno tranne che a Cobbett, a quel tempo, di domandarsi se un rado residuo di ignoranti selvaggi fosse verosimilmente in grado di aver eretto una sorta di sacra torre di Babele verso le stelle, in metà dei villaggi d’Inghilterra.
L’oscurantismo della Riforma, e i razionalisti che ne furono gli eredi, fu in questo modo del tutto unico. Nessuno prima o dopo tenne mai un popolo tanto nelle tenebre quanto coloro che spensero tutte le candele nel secolo sedicesimo. In questo, per esempio, la reazione anticattolica nel secolo sedicesimo fu assai diversa dal primo movimento cattolico nel quarto o quinto secolo. I primi Cristiani nutrirono un grande orrore morale per l’ultima fase della grande civiltà di Roma; ma non tentarono mai di fingere che non fosse una grande civiltà, o che non fosse stata fatta da Roma. Il loro orrore morale era nella maggior parte dei casi giustificato; in alcuni casi considerevolmente esagerato. Ma nelle sue esagerazioni più sfrenate di fanatismo, non parla mai come se i pagani non avessero costruito ponti o prodotto poesia. Non chiamavano l’architettura classica architettura vandalica, come se fosse stata costruita soltanto dai barbari che la distrussero. Eppure ciò sarebbe stato un parallelo alla stessa parola ‘gotico’ che siamo tuttora costretti dall’uso a impiegare. Il mondo medievale non parlava di Platone e Cicerone come di sciocchi occupati in futilità; eppure è esattamente così che un mondo più moderno parlò della filosofia di Aquino e talvolta persino delle parti puramente filosofiche di Dante. I Cristiani riconoscevano un tremendo abisso spirituale che li divideva dai loro grandi antenati; ma riconoscevano che i loro antenati erano grandi. In nessun momento in tutti quei duemila anni si perse la leggenda che Virgilio fosse qualcosa di magnifico, sia come mago nei Secoli Bui sia come modello classico nel Medioevo. In religione e morale vi era stato in effetti un rabbrividente ritrarsi; ma era un ritrarsi dalla sovra-civilizzazione, non un compiaciuto disprezzo per la barbarie. Pensavano che il Colosseo fosse stato l’arena di bestiali abominazioni; di bestie, adoperate dagli uomini in uno spirito troppo vile per essere chiamato bestiale; e così era stato. Ma non pensavano che il Colosseo fosse stato fatto da bestie; né guardavano al suo labirinto di archi con sprezzante curiosità, come alla rude architettura istintiva di un formicaio-collina. In tutta quella mescolanza di rimpianto e dolore e fascino, con cui il paganesimo ha ossessionato i secoli cristiani, non vi fu mai un tocco della innocente volgarità con cui persino i Vittoriani talvolta parlavano dei monaci come se fossero scimmie.
Now the lifting of this load of obscurantism was a thing largely done by the light of nature, by men like William Cobbett or William Morris. And the light of nature showed them very simple and solid things like the large churches in the English countrysides. These things are the unanswerable arguments of the amateur. These are the big guns that he can really bring up in order to outflank the specialist. Constitutional historians like Hume and Hallam and Robertson might have read many things that the adventurous amateur could not read, but it was impossible to pretend that he could not have access to his own huge empty parish church. It required no spectacles to see a church spire; and the stones of Winchester needed no interpreter to translate them from the Latin. These facts were soon found sufficient, to anyone who would use his senses; and it became more and more self-evident that men had been about some very big business in medieval times. The researches of later and more learned scholars confirmed the random commonsense of Cobbett or Morris. But ignorant men had originally made the right guess; and made it merely because they refused to explain away a mountain, or ignore the presence of a whale.
I have remarked that nobody ever tried to do with Roman remains what was once done with Gothic remains. I mean the attempt to treat them not merely as ruins but as rudiments. I mean the attempt to look at the stone arches as we look at stone hatchets, or regard carved pillars as we regard chipped flints. Nobody ever condescended to heathen architecture, as they condescended to Christian architecture. As a matter of fact it is far more impossible for us to build a Gothic abbey than a Roman aqueduct. The engineering work of the pagan empire does in many ways resemble the works of more modern times. It resembles them largely because the method is scientific. It resembles them still more because the labour is servile. You could build a Roman aqueduct and improve on a Roman aqueduct with scientific appliances. But you cannot build a Gothic cathedral with servile labour. People who want to work in that way must put up with the Pyramids and the Eiffel Tower. And this brings me to a final consideration, in this matter of Roman and medieval remains, which has often intrigued and attracted me as an amateur in historical guesswork. It is a yet larger though somewhat looser application of the same principle, that the things that are hid from the wise and understanding are the things that are too large for them to see.
I have often wondered whether the vastness and vitality of the legends that descend from the Dark Ages, such as the legends of King Arthur and the Round Table, were due to this comparative continuity between the last strength of the Empire and the first strength of the Church. I mean that there may have been a moment, even in Britain, when that majesty of the old pagan civilization still stood unchanged, save that it was no longer pagan. The combination of the old pride in being Roman with the new pride in being Christian may have created a militant morality really not unlike its later form of medieval chivalry. In other words, the popular tradition may not be so far wrong when it talks of some dim fighter in the fifth century as a knight. It may not be so far wrong when it talks of the table where those fighters feasted as the original model of knighthood. It is only by a sort of symbol that we clothe the body of that British king in thirteenth century armour; but it may be something more than a symbol which clothes his spirit with the thirteenth century conception of arms. If ever history did repeat itself, the mood of the first Crusaders who fought with the Saracens might really very well have repeated, as in a mirror, the mood of the last baptized Romans and Romanized Britons who fought with the Saxons. It is really a historical fallacy to say that the courtliness and polish of Sir Lancelot would not have existed in that barbarous time. Courtliness and polish are exactly the things that would have existed in one of the last of the Romanized Christians in comparison with his barbarous time. It is a blunder to say that the virginity and the vision of Sir Galahad are a later romantic fiction added to a half-heathen struggle. Virginity and visions are exactly the ideas that would have shone among the last champions of a Catholic culture in a half-heathen struggle. In this matter of Arthurian legend, I am disposed to suspect that the romantic view is really the realistic view, and the right view. If others doubt it, it will not be because of any realistic arguments of history against it. It will be because others do not feel as I do the enormous argument from the scale of popular stories; the sense that a story we have all heard from childhood is something solid and colossal, like a Gothic cathedral or a Roman camp.
THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY
EVERY NOW and again in the long and weary history of literature and journalism something is said that is important, something that blows a trumpet and calls a halt. For the first time, perhaps for many years we have suddenly to stop and think. There remains the essential difference between a sentence that is read once and a sentence that is read twice. Now, one of these arresting and transfiguring hints can be found in Hilaire Belloc’s The Historic Thames. He says it was a mere accident of history that the phrase Westminster Abbey does not sound to us today like the phrase Welbeck Abbey. It would give the modern English a great shock if Westminster Abbey were turned into a suite of rooms for the Duke of Westminster. Yet it gives them no shock that Welbeck Abbey should be turned into a suite of rooms for the Duke of Portland. Yet God was worshipped, I suppose, in Welbeck Abbey as well as in Westminster Abbey. The first fact about Westminster Abbey, considered as a religious institution, is as simple as it is sardonic. It is the great religious institution of the Middle Ages that managed to survive.
Ora, il sollevamento di questo peso di oscurantismo fu cosa in gran parte compiuta alla luce della natura, da uomini come William Cobbett o William Morris. E la luce della natura mostrò loro cose assai semplici e solide come le grandi chiese delle campagne inglesi. Queste cose sono gli argomenti inconfutabili del dilettante. Sono i grossi cannoni che egli può davvero portare in campo per aggirare lo specialista. Storici costituzionali come Hume e Hallam e Robertson potevano aver letto molte cose che l’avventuroso dilettante non poteva leggere, ma era impossibile fingere che egli non avesse accesso alla sua stessa enorme e vuota chiesa parrocchiale. Non occorrevano occhiali per vedere una guglia di chiesa; e le pietre di Winchester non avevano bisogno di interprete per tradurle dal latino. Questi fatti furono presto trovati sufficienti, per chiunque volesse usare i propri sensi; e divenne sempre più auto-evidente che gli uomini si erano occupati di qualche affare assai grande in tempi medievali. Le ricerche di studiosi più tardi e più dotti confermarono il casuale buon senso di Cobbett o Morris. Ma uomini ignoranti avevano originariamente fatto l’ipotesi giusta; e l’avevano fatta semplicemente perché rifiutavano di spiegar via una montagna, o di ignorare la presenza di una balena.
Ho osservato che nessuno tentò mai di fare con i resti romani ciò che una volta fu fatto con i resti gotici. Intendo il tentativo di trattarli non semplicemente come rovine ma come rudimenti. Intendo il tentativo di guardare gli archi di pietra come guardiamo le asce di pietra, o di considerare i pilastri scolpiti come consideriamo le selci scheggiate. Nessuno degnò mai di condiscendenza l’architettura pagana, come degnarono di condiscendenza l’architettura cristiana. Di fatto è assai più impossibile per noi costruire un’abbazia gotica che un acquedotto romano. L’opera ingegneristica dell’impero pagano assomiglia per molti versi alle opere di tempi più moderni. Assomiglia loro in gran parte perché il metodo è scientifico. Assomiglia loro ancor di più perché il lavoro è servile. Si potrebbe costruire un acquedotto romano e migliorare un acquedotto romano con congegni scientifici. Ma non si può costruire una cattedrale gotica con manodopera servile. Chi voglia lavorare a quel modo deve accontentarsi delle Piramidi e della Torre Eiffel. E ciò mi conduce a una considerazione finale, in questa faccenda dei resti romani e medievali, che mi ha spesso incuriosito e attratto come dilettante nelle congetture storiche. È un’applicazione ancora più ampia benché alquanto più libera del medesimo principio, che le cose nascoste ai sapienti e agli intelligenti sono le cose che sono troppo grandi perché essi le vedano.
Mi sono spesso domandato se la vastità e la vitalità delle leggende che discendono dai Secoli Bui, come le leggende di Re Artù e della Tavola Rotonda, fossero dovute a questa relativa continuità tra l’ultima forza dell’Impero e la prima forza della Chiesa. Intendo che vi possa essere stato un momento, persino in Britannia, in cui quella maestà dell’antica civiltà pagana ancora rimaneva immutata, salvo che non era più pagana. La combinazione del vecchio orgoglio di essere Romani con il nuovo orgoglio di essere Cristiani può aver creato una moralità militante davvero non dissimile dalla sua forma successiva della cavalleria medievale. In altre parole, la tradizione popolare può non essere così lontana dal vero quando parla di qualche oscuro combattente del quinto secolo come di un cavaliere. Può non essere così lontana dal vero quando parla della tavola presso cui quei combattenti banchettavano come del modello originario della cavalleria. È solo per una sorta di simbolo che rivestiamo il corpo di quel re britannico con l’armatura del secolo tredicesimo; ma può essere qualcosa di più di un simbolo ciò che riveste il suo spirito con la concezione delle armi del secolo tredicesimo. Se mai la storia si ripeté, l’umore dei primi Crociati che combatterono con i Saraceni potrebbe davvero assai bene aver ripetuto, come in uno specchio, l’umore degli ultimi Romani battezzati e Britanni romanizzati che combatterono con i Sassoni. È davvero una fallacia storica dire che la cortesia e la raffinatezza di Sir Lancillotto non sarebbero esistite in quel barbaro tempo. Cortesia e raffinatezza sono esattamente le cose che sarebbero esistite in uno degli ultimi Cristiani romanizzati in confronto al suo barbaro tempo. È un errore dire che la verginità e la visione di Sir Galahad siano una finzione romantica più tarda aggiunta a una lotta semi-pagana. Verginità e visioni sono esattamente le idee che avrebbero brillato tra gli ultimi campioni di una cultura cattolica in una lotta semi-pagana. In questa faccenda della leggenda arturiana, sono incline a sospettare che la veduta romantica sia davvero la veduta realistica, e la veduta giusta. Se altri ne dubitano, non sarà a causa di alcun argomento realistico della storia contro di essa. Sarà perché gli altri non sentono come me l’enorme argomento tratto dalla scala delle storie popolari; il senso che una storia che tutti abbiamo udito fin dall’infanzia è qualcosa di solido e colossale, come una cattedrale gotica o un accampamento romano.
L’ASPETTO RELIGIOSO DELL’ABBAZIA DI WESTMINSTER
OGNI TANTO nella lunga e stanca storia della letteratura e del giornalismo si dice qualcosa d’importante, qualcosa che squilla una tromba e chiama l’alt. Per la prima volta, forse da molti anni, dobbiamo d’un tratto fermarci e pensare. Rimane la differenza essenziale tra una frase che si legge una volta e una frase che si legge due volte. Ora, uno di questi accenni arrestanti e trasfiguranti si può trovare in The Historic Thames di Hilaire Belloc. Egli dice che fu un mero accidente della storia se la locuzione Abbazia di Westminster non suona a noi oggi come la locuzione Abbazia di Welbeck. Darebbe agli inglesi moderni un gran colpo se l’Abbazia di Westminster fosse trasformata in un appartamento per il Duca di Westminster. Eppure non dà loro alcun colpo che l’Abbazia di Welbeck sia stata trasformata in un appartamento per il Duca di Portland. Eppure Dio era adorato, suppongo, nell’Abbazia di Welbeck tanto bene quanto nell’Abbazia di Westminster. Il primo fatto sull’Abbazia di Westminster, considerata come istituzione religiosa, è tanto semplice quanto sardonico. È la grande istituzione religiosa del Medioevo che riuscì a sopravvivere.
The whole of this theme is, of course, subject to exaggeration on both sides. One of the ablest men I have ever known summed up all the tombs at Westminster which tourists go to see in the curt and confident formula: “Westminster Abbey is to be venerated, not because of those that sleep therein, but rather in spite of them.” Many may call this a harsh paradox; but if they walk round the Abbey seriously and slowly, and really observe what petty politicians and third-rate generals have cumbered the ground there with their cold and clumsy monuments, I do not think that they will wholly deny the truth of that idle but bitter jest. A very great part of the funereal art in the Abbey can really be expressed only by one of those colossal epigrams which can be found in the Gospels more than anywhere else. It is, indeed, such statuary as would be made by the dead burying their dead.
It is true that anyone knowing the savour either of England or Christianity will have the religious emotion as well as the patriotic by the low Gothic tomb of Chaucer. But this, if it be examined, is an exception that proves the rule. For Chaucer was buried there when the popular Christianity of the Middle Ages still coloured this church like all others. It would be appropriate in any case that Chaucer should be in Westminster Abbey, even if it were exactly what it was when he used to look out of his London window at its towers. But it would be far more appropriate if men like Pitt or Macaulay were buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral; the new Renaissance St. Paul’s, which seems built as a pantheon for the heathen but heroic aristocrats of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Florid pillars and posturing statues are appropriate to them; most of them died rather defying death than looking for immortality. And it is really a part of their patriotic, but not Christian spirit that their figures should, as it were, stand frozen for ever in some gesture of eloquence or pride. No imaginative person will wholly fail to respond to the emotion expressed about a murdered Renaissance prince by a great English Renaissance poet:
He is there Up like a Roman statue and will stand Till dawn has made him marble.
But to Chaucer all this would have been utterly incomprehensible in connection with a church. In that connection he would have thought it as insolent and vulgar as a waxwork show. For he lived before the great lords had become the legend of England, instead of the great saints. Chaucer, whatever his own faults or vanities might be, would certainly have been the first to admit that it was the Abbey that sanctified his dust and not his dust that sanctified the Abbey. He would not have thought of it as a gallery or public record office where the names and deeds of great poets could be found, though it is likely enough that he knew he was a great poet, and even, among his worldly acquaintances, warmly insisted on the fact. He would have thought of the Abbey as a refuge, where a poor old sinner named Geoffrey Chaucer might feel a little more comfortable in the Dies Irae. I am not here choosing by ethical preference between the two attitudes; still less do I despise either one or the other. The name of Nelson, for instance, will always be not only an inspiring but, properly understood, a purifying name. And it seems quite appropriate for Nelson, in his own time, type, station and tradition, to cry out, “A peerage or Westminster Abbey!” meaning by Westminster Abbey merely glory and death. But I doubt if Chaucer could have been made to understand what a peerage could possibly have to do with Westminster Abbey. Warriors at least as valiant and victorious as Nelson were buried in Chaucer’s day—the Black Prince, for instance. Warriors at least as valiant and victorious as Nelson were buried at Westminster in the Middle Ages—Henry V, for instance. But when their images were carved on their tombs at all they were carved with closed eyes and hands pointed in prayer. And I have seen one such monument, in Salisbury Cathedral, I think, in which the man lies in dumb supplication, but the dog at his feet has risen erect and watchful, having heard the trumpet of God. It has nothing to do with men being religious men in the modern sense, or even with their being good men. It is a matter of a great popular religion which never affects anybody except when it affects everybody. King John would have been quite incapable of imagining himself exhibited in a church in any other attitude.
I am not here discussing, of course, anything about the ecclesiastical changes as they affect theology; still less should I dream of saying that the spirit Chaucer would have understood did not continue at all in the Anglican Church after the spoliation of the monasteries. It continued markedly in George Herbert, and most unmistakably in Bishop Ken. But all that is a controversy with which, fortunately, we are not here concerned. My point for the moment is purely political; I say that the rise of England into a great modern nation, the particular kind of aristocracy that ruled it while it rose; the greater severance for various reasons from the other European nations, and everything that culminated in the victorious war against Napoleon and the established peace of Queen Victoria—I say that all this did, in fact, produce a type of public spirit and public art in which the old religious significance of the Abbey sometimes almost disappeared. The idea increased that Westminster Abbey was a pantheon, more sensible, but no less secular, than the absurd Valhalla that the Kaiser had at Berlin, where some petty Teuton prince was represented as a giant and Goethe put beside him as a pigmy. That singular mixture of humour and shame which is the English temperament, saved us from doing anything so bad as that. Our statues, at the worst, were only conspicuous by being bad statues, like the old statue of the Duke of Wellington. At the best, they are conspicuous by not being there at all, like the new statue of Shakespeare. But there was enough of this parade of pompous sculpture to confuse or hide the spiritual meaning of Westminster Abbey, and sometimes even its architectural style. We talk of not being able to see the wood for the trees. It may be said that people cannot in this case see the church for the tombs.
L’intero tema è, naturalmente, soggetto a esagerazione da entrambe le parti. Uno degli uomini più capaci che io abbia mai conosciuto riassumeva tutte le tombe di Westminster che i turisti vanno a vedere nella formula secca e sicura: «L’abbazia di Westminster va venerata non per quelli che vi dormono, ma piuttosto a loro dispetto». Molti potranno chiamarlo un aspro paradosso; ma se percorrono l’abbazia seriamente e lentamente, e osservano davvero quali meschini politicanti e generali di terz’ordine hanno ingombrato quel suolo con i loro freddi e goffi monumenti, non credo che negheranno del tutto la verità di quella oziosa ma amara facezia. Una gran parte dell’arte funeraria dell’abbazia può davvero essere espressa solo da uno di quei colossali epigrammi che si trovano nei Vangeli più che altrove. È, in verità, una statuaria quale sarebbe fatta dai morti che seppelliscono i loro morti.
È vero che chiunque conosca il sapore o dell’Inghilterra o del Cristianesimo proverà l’emozione religiosa oltre che quella patriottica dinanzi alla bassa tomba gotica di Chaucer. Ma questa, se la si esamina, è un’eccezione che conferma la regola. Poiché Chaucer vi fu sepolto quando il Cristianesimo popolare del Medioevo ancora coloriva questa chiesa come tutte le altre. Sarebbe comunque appropriato che Chaucer stesse nell’abbazia di Westminster, anche se essa fosse esattamente ciò che era quando egli soleva guardarne le torri dalla sua finestra londinese. Ma sarebbe assai più appropriato che uomini come Pitt o Macaulay fossero sepolti nella Cattedrale di San Paolo; la nuova San Paolo rinascimentale, che sembra costruita come un pantheon per gli aristocratici pagani ma eroici del Seicento e del Settecento. Pilastri fioriti e statue in posa sono appropriati a loro; la maggior parte di essi morì sfidando la morte più che cercando l’immortalità. Ed è davvero parte del loro spirito patriottico, ma non cristiano, che le loro figure debbano, per così dire, restare gelate per sempre in qualche gesto di eloquenza o di orgoglio. Nessuna persona immaginosa mancherà del tutto di rispondere all’emozione espressa su un principe rinascimentale assassinato da un grande poeta rinascimentale inglese:
Egli è là Eretto come una statua romana, e starà ritto Finché l’alba non l’avrà fatto marmo.
Ma per Chaucer tutto questo sarebbe stato del tutto incomprensibile in rapporto a una chiesa. In quel rapporto lo avrebbe ritenuto insolente e volgare quanto uno spettacolo di figure di cera. Poiché egli visse prima che i grandi signori fossero divenuti la leggenda dell’Inghilterra, al posto dei grandi santi. Chaucer, quali che fossero i suoi difetti o le sue vanità, sarebbe certamente stato il primo ad ammettere che fu l’abbazia a santificare la sua polvere e non la sua polvere a santificare l’abbazia. Non l’avrebbe pensata come una galleria o un pubblico archivio dove poter trovare i nomi e le gesta dei grandi poeti, benché sia assai probabile ch’egli sapesse di essere un grande poeta, e persino, tra le sue conoscenze mondane, insistesse calorosamente sul fatto. Avrebbe pensato all’abbazia come a un rifugio, dove un povero vecchio peccatore di nome Geoffrey Chaucer potesse sentirsi un poco più a suo agio nel Dies Irae. Non sto qui scegliendo per preferenza etica tra i due atteggiamenti; e ancor meno disprezzo l’uno o l’altro. Il nome di Nelson, per esempio, sarà sempre non solo un nome ispiratore ma, inteso rettamente, purificatore. E pare del tutto appropriato che Nelson, nel suo proprio tempo, tipo, condizione e tradizione, gridasse: «Un titolo nobiliare o l’abbazia di Westminster!», intendendo per abbazia di Westminster semplicemente la gloria e la morte. Ma dubito che si sarebbe potuto far comprendere a Chaucer che cosa mai un titolo nobiliare potesse avere a che fare con l’abbazia di Westminster. Guerrieri almeno tanto valorosi e vittoriosi quanto Nelson furono sepolti ai tempi di Chaucer—il Principe Nero, per esempio. Guerrieri almeno tanto valorosi e vittoriosi quanto Nelson furono sepolti a Westminster nel Medioevo—Enrico V, per esempio. Ma quando le loro immagini venivano scolpite sulle loro tombe, erano scolpite con gli occhi chiusi e le mani giunte in preghiera. E ho visto un tale monumento, nella Cattedrale di Salisbury, credo, in cui l’uomo giace in muta supplica, ma il cane ai suoi piedi si è drizzato eretto e vigile, avendo udito la tromba di Dio. Non ha nulla a che vedere con l’essere gli uomini religiosi nel senso moderno, e nemmeno con il loro essere uomini buoni. È questione di una grande religione popolare che non tocca mai nessuno se non quando tocca tutti. Re Giovanni sarebbe stato del tutto incapace di immaginarsi esibito in una chiesa in qualsiasi altro atteggiamento.
Non sto qui discutendo, s’intende, nulla riguardo ai mutamenti ecclesiastici in quanto toccano la teologia; e ancor meno sognerei di dire che lo spirito che Chaucer avrebbe compreso non continuasse affatto nella Chiesa anglicana dopo la spoliazione dei monasteri. Continuò in modo marcato in George Herbert, e in modo assai inconfondibile nel vescovo Ken. Ma tutto ciò è una controversia della quale, per fortuna, non ci occupiamo qui. Il mio punto per il momento è puramente politico; dico che l’ascesa dell’Inghilterra a grande nazione moderna, il particolare tipo di aristocrazia che la governò mentre sorgeva; il maggior distacco, per varie ragioni, dalle altre nazioni europee, e tutto ciò che culminò nella vittoriosa guerra contro Napoleone e nella pace stabilita della Regina Vittoria—dico che tutto questo, di fatto, produsse un tipo di spirito pubblico e di arte pubblica in cui l’antico significato religioso dell’abbazia talvolta quasi scompariva. Crebbe l’idea che l’abbazia di Westminster fosse un pantheon, più sensato, ma non meno secolare, dell’assurdo Valhalla che il Kaiser aveva a Berlino, dove qualche insignificante principotto teutonico era rappresentato come un gigante e Goethe posto accanto a lui come un pigmeo. Quella singolare mescolanza di umorismo e vergogna che è il temperamento inglese ci salvò dal fare qualcosa di tanto brutto. Le nostre statue, nel peggiore dei casi, erano cospicue solo per essere brutte statue, come la vecchia statua del Duca di Wellington. Nel migliore, sono cospicue per non esserci affatto, come la nuova statua di Shakespeare. Ma vi fu abbastanza di questa parata di pomposa scultura da confondere o nascondere il significato spirituale dell’abbazia di Westminster, e talvolta persino il suo stile architettonico. Diciamo di non riuscire a vedere il bosco per gli alberi. Si può dire che in questo caso le persone non riescono a vedere la chiesa per le tombe.
All that the Abbey meant to the ethics and atmosphere of this island from its earliest foundations is a thing not easy to state to the average modern reader. For the average modern reader, however well educated, is always taught the tale of the early Middle Ages in such a way that it makes no sense. This is because the main concern of the Middle Ages was the same as the main concern of this article; and it is almost always entirely left out. To take one working instance at random, the ordinary schoolboy of a good school, such as the school I went to, is always told, and therefore naturally believes, that Richard Coeur de Lion was a romantic and irresponsible ne’er-do-well who went away to the Crusades for the same reason that an adventurer takes the King’s shilling or a schoolboy runs away to sea—an itch for fighting or an impatience of honest work. Now, whatever Richard’s temperament may have been (and, no doubt, it was adventurous) this explanation simply does not cover the facts. Especially it does not cover these two facts—that John, who stopped to rule, was quite as fond of fighting as Richard, and did it very well; and that Philip Augustus of France, who went on the Crusade with Richard, was not particularly fond of fighting, and would very much have liked to stop and rule. The key that is lost here is simply a little thing called the Christian religion, in which all these men, good and bad, believed, and which was in a mortal peril from which the Christian peoples simply expected their Kings to defend it. Now, we could find a somewhat similar instance of the religious element being missed, and the whole business being therefore unmeaning, in the earlier history of Westminster Abbey. The usual way of writing in England about the times before and after the Norman Conquest is to represent it at best as what Carlyle called a “rude stalwart age”; an age of crowned freebooters, who neither asked nor gave mercy; an age of race conquering race with a sort of savage fair play and a more or less useful settlement; in short, a time when instincts laid a foundation on which ethics had yet to build. Anyone taking this ordinary heathen and dynastic view of the business would see something very fierce and final in the coincidence which Freeman maintained, that the Saxon Harold was crowned in Westminster Abbey almost immediately before he was killed at Hastings, and that the victorious Duke of Normandy was certainly crowned in Westminster Abbey almost immediately afterwards. The blood and iron theory of the Dark Ages would see in this the overwhelming of a race by a race; the soft, unguarded Saxons with their soft, unguarded King, Edward the Confessor, swept to nowhere by a raid of aliens clad in iron, appealing to nothing but force, and caring nothing for England. But the person holding this theory would instantly be pulled up short, and extremely puzzled by the discovery that the next really important thing that happened in Westminster Abbey after the Normans were in full possession of it was the canonization of Edward the Confessor. Stated in the modern manner, his difficulty would stand something like this: What made a number of William’s own Norman bishops, French gentlemen like any other, join in glorifying the memory of an old fool who had failed to save the Saxons from the victorious arms of their own uncles and cousins? Why should mere strong men, mere victors, bow down to the very weakest man of the defeated party and the subject race? Here, again, the key is always left out; the real explanation is never given. It will be found in the title of this article.
It was based, in short, on one broad and simple fact, which will seem almost incredible to people living in an age when religion is generally the product of a specially religious temperament. The fact was, to put it shortly, that though William the Conqueror had taken Edward the Confessor’s land, he did, in all probability, really regard Edward the Confessor as his superior. These fighting men of the Dark Ages were very fierce; but they did really think, ideally speaking, that it would be better if they were very gentle.
They were all soldiers; they would all have agreed that soldiers were inferior to saints. If we say of the men in the ages during which the Abbey was first erected, that they did not curb their coarse and cruel appetites, that in so far as they were tyrants and usurpers they went on being tyrants and usurpers, we shall probably be right. But if we read into them a modern philosophy of force, and imagine that they despised monks or despised meekness, we shall be exactly as wrong as if we supposed that all City men despise a soldier for having been fool enough to have gone under fire. Christianity was to these men exactly what patriotism is to modern Englishmen; the one sacred bond which even the most evil men would not like to own they had betrayed.
This fact of the old and real religious sentiment about the Abbey can be illustrated by any one out of the ten or twenty most famous things in it. Take the case of two celebrated men of the later Middle Ages, a father and a son, who were perhaps as responsible as anyone for the last turn taken by the medieval civilization in England, and who are both more or less connected with the place. I mean Henry IV, called Bolingbroke, and his son, the victor of Agincourt. There is nobody who has heard of Westminster Abbey who has not heard of the Jerusalem Chamber. There may even be few who have heard of the Jerusalem Chamber who have not been told by some guide-book or cicerone that Henry of Bolingbroke died there. But I think there are very much fewer people who would instantly remember (though the fact is known, of course, to all students of such things) that this very selfish, cynical and materialistic usurper found a strange spiritual comfort in dying in the Jerusalem Chamber, because it seemed to him a half fulfillment of a vow which had haunted his life, a vow to die or recover Jerusalem. The sentiment, in fact, was almost exactly the same as had moved a much more heroic man in a much more heroic medieval period, King Robert Bruce, to send his best warrior out of a much-menaced country, to carry his heart to the Holy Land, since he himself had never managed to carry there his powerful body and his powerful brain. To such men Westminster Abbey was not a national and finally satisfying thing. To such men Westminster Abbey was even a pis aller. When we have understood that, we have some glimpse of that burning concentration of the Christian conscience which made the Christendom of the Middle Ages almost one nation. But when modern humanitarians talk of international solidarity and the need for a United States of Europe, I do not notice that they give much praise to the Popes and the Crusades who so nearly made it a reality.
Tutto ciò che l’abbazia significò per l’etica e l’atmosfera di quest’isola fin dalle sue prime fondamenta è cosa non facile da esporre al lettore moderno medio. Poiché al lettore moderno medio, per quanto ben istruito, si insegna sempre la vicenda dell’alto Medioevo in modo tale che non abbia alcun senso. Questo perché la principale preoccupazione del Medioevo era la stessa della principale preoccupazione di questo articolo; e viene quasi sempre interamente tralasciata. Per prendere a caso un esempio concreto, all’ordinario scolaro di una buona scuola, come la scuola che io frequentai, viene sempre detto, e perciò naturalmente egli crede, che Riccardo Cuor di Leone fosse un romantico e irresponsabile scioperato che se ne andò alle Crociate per la stessa ragione per cui un avventuriero prende lo scellino del Re o uno scolaro scappa per andare per mare—un prurito di battersi o un’insofferenza per l’onesto lavoro. Ora, quale che possa essere stato il temperamento di Riccardo (e, senza dubbio, fu avventuroso), questa spiegazione semplicemente non copre i fatti. In particolare non copre questi due fatti—che Giovanni, il quale si fermò a governare, era altrettanto amante del combattere quanto Riccardo, e lo faceva molto bene; e che Filippo Augusto di Francia, il quale andò alla Crociata con Riccardo, non era particolarmente amante del combattere, e avrebbe assai preferito fermarsi a governare. La chiave che qui si perde è semplicemente una piccola cosa chiamata religione cristiana, nella quale tutti questi uomini, buoni e cattivi, credevano, e che si trovava in un mortale pericolo dal quale i popoli cristiani semplicemente si aspettavano che i loro Re la difendessero. Ora, potremmo trovare un caso alquanto simile dell’elemento religioso mancato, e dell’intera faccenda resa perciò priva di senso, nella più antica storia dell’abbazia di Westminster. Il modo consueto di scrivere in Inghilterra dei tempi prima e dopo la conquista normanna è di rappresentarla nel migliore dei casi come ciò che Carlyle chiamò una «rude età gagliarda»; un’età di predoni coronati, che né chiedevano né davano pietà; un’età di razza che conquistava razza con una sorta di selvaggio fair play e una sistemazione più o meno utile; in breve, un tempo in cui gli istinti posavano una fondazione sulla quale l’etica doveva ancora costruire. Chiunque assumesse questa ordinaria visione pagana e dinastica della faccenda vedrebbe qualcosa di assai feroce e definitivo nella coincidenza che Freeman sosteneva, che il sassone Aroldo fu incoronato nell’abbazia di Westminster quasi immediatamente prima di essere ucciso a Hastings, e che il vittorioso Duca di Normandia fu certamente incoronato nell’abbazia di Westminster quasi immediatamente dopo. La teoria del sangue e del ferro dei Secoli Bui vedrebbe in ciò il sopraffare di una razza da parte di una razza; i molli, indifesi sassoni con il loro molle, indifeso Re, Edoardo il Confessore, spazzati nel nulla da un’incursione di stranieri rivestiti di ferro, che si appellavano a null’altro che alla forza, e nulla si curavano dell’Inghilterra. Ma chi sostenesse questa teoria sarebbe istantaneamente arrestato di colpo, ed estremamente sconcertato dalla scoperta che la successiva cosa davvero importante accaduta nell’abbazia di Westminster dopo che i Normanni ne furono in pieno possesso fu la canonizzazione di Edoardo il Confessore. Formulata alla maniera moderna, la sua difficoltà suonerebbe pressappoco così: che cosa indusse un certo numero dei Normanni vescovi di Guglielmo, gentiluomini francesi come tutti gli altri, a unirsi nel glorificare la memoria di un vecchio sciocco che non era riuscito a salvare i sassoni dalle armi vittoriose dei loro stessi zii e cugini? Perché uomini meramente forti, meri vincitori, dovrebbero inchinarsi dinanzi all’uomo più debole del partito sconfitto e della razza soggetta? Anche qui la chiave è sempre tralasciata; la vera spiegazione non è mai data. La si troverà nel titolo di questo articolo.
Essa si fondava, in breve, su un fatto ampio e semplice, che sembrerà quasi incredibile alle persone che vivono in un’epoca in cui la religione è generalmente il prodotto di un temperamento specificamente religioso. Il fatto era, per dirla in breve, che benché Guglielmo il Conquistatore avesse preso la terra di Edoardo il Confessore, egli, con ogni probabilità, considerava davvero Edoardo il Confessore come suo superiore. Questi uomini d’arme dei Secoli Bui erano assai feroci; ma pensavano davvero, idealmente parlando, che sarebbe stato meglio se fossero stati assai miti.
Erano tutti soldati; avrebbero tutti convenuto che i soldati erano inferiori ai santi. Se diciamo degli uomini delle epoche durante le quali l’abbazia fu dapprima eretta che non frenarono i loro rozzi e crudeli appetiti, che in quanto erano tiranni e usurpatori continuarono a essere tiranni e usurpatori, avremo probabilmente ragione. Ma se leggiamo in loro una moderna filosofia della forza, e immaginiamo che disprezzassero i monaci o disprezzassero la mitezza, avremo esattamente lo stesso torto che se supponessimo che tutti gli uomini della City disprezzino un soldato per essere stato sciocco abbastanza da andare sotto il fuoco. Il Cristianesimo era per questi uomini esattamente ciò che il patriottismo è per gli inglesi moderni; l’unico vincolo sacro che persino gli uomini più malvagi non amerebbero riconoscere di aver tradito.
Questo fatto dell’antico e reale sentimento religioso riguardo all’abbazia può essere illustrato da una qualunque delle dieci o venti cose più famose che vi si trovano. Si prenda il caso di due celebri uomini del tardo Medioevo, un padre e un figlio, che furono forse responsabili quanto chiunque altro dell’ultima svolta presa dalla civiltà medievale in Inghilterra, e che sono entrambi più o meno legati al luogo. Intendo Enrico IV, detto Bolingbroke, e suo figlio, il vincitore di Azincourt. Non v’è nessuno che abbia sentito parlare dell’abbazia di Westminster che non abbia sentito parlare della Camera di Gerusalemme. Vi saranno persino pochi che, avendo sentito parlare della Camera di Gerusalemme, non siano stati informati da qualche guida o cicerone che Enrico di Bolingbroke vi morì. Ma credo che vi siano assai meno persone che ricorderebbero all’istante (benché il fatto sia noto, s’intende, a tutti gli studiosi di tali cose) che questo assai egoista, cinico e materialista usurpatore trovò uno strano conforto spirituale nel morire nella Camera di Gerusalemme, perché gli parve un mezzo adempimento di un voto che aveva ossessionato la sua vita, un voto di morire per Gerusalemme o di riconquistarla. Il sentimento, di fatto, era quasi esattamente lo stesso che aveva mosso un uomo assai più eroico in un periodo medievale assai più eroico, Re Robert Bruce, a mandare il suo miglior guerriero fuori da un paese assai minacciato, per portare il suo cuore in Terra Santa, poiché egli stesso non era mai riuscito a portarvi il suo potente corpo e il suo potente cervello. Per tali uomini l’abbazia di Westminster non era una cosa nazionale e finalmente appagante. Per tali uomini l’abbazia di Westminster era persino un pis aller. Quando avremo compreso questo, avremo qualche barlume di quell’ardente concentrazione della coscienza cristiana che rese la Cristianità del Medioevo quasi una sola nazione. Ma quando gli umanitari moderni parlano di solidarietà internazionale e della necessità di Stati Uniti d’Europa, non noto che diano molta lode ai Papi e alle Crociate che tanto vicini furono a renderla una realtà.
The case of Henry V carries me back to an instance of which I am not so sure, and of which I have not the details by me. But I am certain that I read in some quarter of competent learning and authority that Henry V’s entry into Paris was marked by proceedings which would very much astonish any good modern English poet, if he were called upon to write a patriotic poem on the event. To do these modern men of genius justice, I think it would have considerably surprised Shakespeare himself, for though Shakespeare was unquestionably in sympathy with the medieval type of religion in such vital matters as the admission or the purgation of sin, the note of international and European Christianity had been somewhat lost even by his time. In the account I read, so far as I remember, the principal interest displayed by Henry V entering Paris after Agincourt was a strong desire to pay homage to the various relics of celebrated saints which were preserved in that city. So that the conqueror of France, though in many ways a rather exceptionally rude and ruthless conqueror may almost be said to have passed a considerable part of his triumphal progress on his knees. These are the things (and I could give twenty other instances with more certainty and exactitude than I can give this one) which really strike the note of the extraordinary and universal conviction of medieval men, and exactly what the men who really made the Abbey would have meant by its religious aspect.
I am not writing controversially and I do not desire in this place to diminish the credit of the Imperial type of patriotism, but in the matter of spiritual atmospheres it is not untrue to say that if Chaucer or even Sackville, had read Mr. Kipling’s poetry and understood it they would simply not have been able to make head or tail of what he meant when he said:
The hush of the dread high altar Where the Abbey makes us We.
They would not have been able to understand how a vague Darwinian like Cecil Rhodes, who called a lonely hill in Africa “his church”, could have anything to do with the Abbey at all. It is not necessary to take so extreme a view in order to see that the two alternative courses which the religion of Western Europe may take are in a certain sense symbolized in the position of the Abbey today. At this moment the secular and the religious aspects of the institution are still more or less balanced. But under the searching light of spiritual tragedies, which more and more divide the nations into the friends and the enemies of the old proclamation of Constantine, the institution will almost certainly become more of one thing or more of the other. Our religion will either become more and more what the religion of the old Roman poets and historians so largely became, a certain savour of sanctity clinging round the emblems of patriotism and civic pride, so that the tattered flags above the altar will be at last more sacred than the altar itself. Or it will become more and more what that mysterious energy was before which the Roman religion of the poets and the historians perished— a voice out of the catacombs and a cry from the Cross.
THE RELIGIOUS AIM OF EDUCATION
By G.K. Chesterton
From The Torchbearer, 1925
IT IS ONLY by a definite and even deliberate narrowing of the mind that we can keep religion out of education. I do not deny that it may in certain cases be the least of many evils; that it may be a sort of loyalty to a political compromise; that it is certainly better than a political injustice. But secular education is a limitation, if it be only a self-limitation. The natural thing is to say what you think about nature; and especially, so to speak, about the nature of nature. The first and most obvious thing that a person is interested in is what sort of world he is living in; and why he is living in it. If you do not know, of course, you will not be able to say; but the mere fact of not being able to answer the question that the other person is most likely to ask, may or may not be what some people call education, but it is not a very brilliant exhibition of instruction. If you have convictions upon these cosmic and fundamental things, whether negative or positive, you are an instructor who is on one most important point refusing to instruct. Your motive may be generous, or it may be merely timid; but certainly it is not in itself educational.
It is sometimes said that the devotees of a doctrinal religion, who are so often depicted as donkeys, are in matters of this kind wearing blinkers. The word is not wisely chosen by the critics; and in one sense is much more applicable to the critic himself. The man who teaches authoritative answers to ultimate questions, even if he only says that Mumbo Jumbo made the world out of a pumpkin, may be dogmatizing or persecuting or tyrannically laying down the law about everything, but he is not blinking anything. He is not wearing blinkers, which implies deliberately limiting the field of his own vision. His vision may be in our view an illusion; but if it is very vivid to him, we cannot blame him for describing it; and anyhow he is describing the whole of it. If there is such a thing in the world as a donkey deliberately wearing blinkers, it is the enlightened educationist who is always making a nervous effort to keep out of his task of imparting knowledge any reference to the things that men from the beginning of the world have most wanted to know. Nor are those things mere hole-and-corner objects of a special curiosity. Whether or no they can ever be known, they are not only worth knowing, but they are the simplest and most elementary sort of knowledge. It is a good thing that children should fully realize that there is an objective world outside them, as solid as the lamp-post out in the street. But even when we make the lamp-post quite objective, it is not unnatural to ask what is its object. A naturalist, noting the common objects of the street, may observe many facts and put them down in a note-book. A bicyclist may bump into a lamp-post; a tramp may lean against a lamp-post; a drunkard may embrace a lamp-post or even in a lighter moment try to climb a lamp-post. But it is not a strange or specialist sort of knowledge to note about a lamp-post that it has a lamp.
Il caso di Enrico V mi riporta a un episodio del quale non sono altrettanto sicuro, e del quale non ho i dettagli sottomano. Ma sono certo di aver letto, in qualche fonte di dotta competenza e autorità, che l’ingresso di Enrico V in Parigi fu segnato da atti che assai stupirebbero qualsiasi buon poeta inglese moderno, se gli venisse chiesto di scrivere un poema patriottico sull’evento. Per rendere giustizia a questi moderni uomini di genio, credo che avrebbe considerevolmente sorpreso lo stesso Shakespeare, poiché, benché Shakespeare fosse indubbiamente in sintonia con il tipo medievale di religione in questioni vitali come l’ammissione o la purgazione del peccato, la nota della Cristianità internazionale ed europea era stata in qualche modo smarrita perfino ai suoi tempi. Nel resoconto che lessi, per quanto ricordo, il principale interesse mostrato da Enrico V entrando a Parigi dopo Azincourt fu un forte desiderio di rendere omaggio alle varie reliquie di santi celebri che erano conservate in quella città. Cosicché il conquistatore della Francia, benché sotto molti aspetti un conquistatore eccezionalmente rude e spietato, si può quasi dire che trascorse una parte considerevole del suo trionfale incedere in ginocchio. Sono queste le cose (e potrei fornire venti altri esempi con maggiore certezza ed esattezza di quanta ne possa fornire per questo) che colgono davvero la nota della straordinaria e universale convinzione degli uomini medievali, ed esattamente ciò che gli uomini che davvero costruirono l’Abbazia avrebbero inteso per il suo aspetto religioso.
Non sto scrivendo in tono polemico e non desidero in questa sede sminuire il merito del tipo imperiale di patriottismo, ma in materia di atmosfere spirituali non è falso dire che se Chaucer o perfino Sackville avessero letto la poesia del signor Kipling e l’avessero compresa, semplicemente non sarebbero riusciti a raccapezzarsi di ciò che egli intendeva quando disse:
Il silenzio del temuto altare maggiore Dove l’Abbazia ci fa Noi.
Non sarebbero riusciti a comprendere come un vago darwiniano quale Cecil Rhodes, che chiamò una solitaria collina in Africa «la sua chiesa», potesse avere qualcosa a che fare con l’Abbazia. Non è necessario assumere una posizione così estrema per vedere che le due strade alternative che la religione dell’Europa occidentale può prendere sono in un certo senso simboleggiate nella posizione dell’Abbazia oggi. In questo momento gli aspetti secolari e quelli religiosi dell’istituzione sono ancora più o meno in equilibrio. Ma sotto la luce penetrante delle tragedie spirituali, che sempre più dividono le nazioni fra amiche e nemiche dell’antica proclamazione di Costantino, l’istituzione diventerà quasi certamente più l’una cosa o più l’altra. La nostra religione diventerà o sempre più ciò che in gran parte divenne la religione degli antichi poeti e storici romani, un certo sentore di santità aggrappato agli emblemi del patriottismo e dell’orgoglio civico, cosicché le bandiere lacere sopra l’altare saranno alla fine più sacre dell’altare stesso. Oppure diventerà sempre più ciò che era quella misteriosa energia dinanzi alla quale perì la religione romana dei poeti e degli storici: una voce dalle catacombe e un grido dalla Croce.
LO SCOPO RELIGIOSO DELL’EDUCAZIONE
Di G.K. Chesterton
Da The Torchbearer, 1925
È SOLO mediante un preciso e persino deliberato restringimento della mente che possiamo tenere la religione fuori dall’educazione. Non nego che possa in certi casi essere il minore di molti mali; che possa essere una sorta di lealtà a un compromesso politico; che sia certamente meglio di un’ingiustizia politica. Ma l’educazione laica è una limitazione, foss’anche solo un’auto-limitazione. La cosa naturale è dire ciò che si pensa riguardo alla natura; e specialmente, per così dire, riguardo alla natura della natura. La prima e più ovvia cosa a cui una persona si interessa è che tipo di mondo sia quello in cui vive; e perché vi vive. Se non lo sai, naturalmente, non sarai in grado di dirlo; ma il semplice fatto di non saper rispondere alla domanda che con più probabilità l’altra persona porrà, può essere o non essere ciò che alcuni chiamano educazione, ma non è una esibizione molto brillante di istruzione. Se hai convinzioni su queste cose cosmiche e fondamentali, siano esse negative o positive, sei un istruttore che, su un punto importantissimo, si rifiuta di istruire. Il tuo motivo può essere generoso, oppure può essere semplicemente timido; ma di certo non è di per sé educativo.
Si dice talvolta che i devoti di una religione dottrinale, che così spesso vengono raffigurati come asini, in questioni di questo genere portino i paraocchi. La parola non è scelta con saggezza dai critici; e in un certo senso è molto più applicabile al critico stesso. L’uomo che insegna risposte autorevoli a domande ultime, anche se dice soltanto che Mumbo Jumbo fece il mondo da una zucca, può star dogmatizzando o perseguitando o imponendo tirannicamente la legge su ogni cosa, ma non sta chiudendo gli occhi su nulla. Non porta i paraocchi, il che implica limitare deliberatamente il campo della propria visione. La sua visione può essere, a nostro avviso, un’illusione; ma se per lui è molto vivida, non possiamo biasimarlo per averla descritta; e comunque egli la descrive per intero. Se esiste al mondo una cosa come un asino che porta deliberatamente i paraocchi, è l’illuminato pedagogo che compie sempre un nervoso sforzo per tenere fuori dal proprio compito di impartire conoscenza ogni riferimento alle cose che gli uomini, dal principio del mondo, hanno più desiderato conoscere. Né quelle cose sono meri oggetti angusti e reconditi di una curiosità particolare. Che possano o no essere mai conosciute, esse non solo valgono la pena di essere conosciute, ma sono il genere di conoscenza più semplice ed elementare. È una buona cosa che i bambini comprendano appieno che esiste un mondo oggettivo fuori di loro, solido come il lampione là fuori nella strada. Ma anche quando rendiamo il lampione del tutto oggettivo, non è innaturale chiedersi quale sia il suo oggetto. Un naturalista, annotando gli oggetti comuni della strada, può osservare molti fatti e metterli giù in un taccuino. Un ciclista può sbattere contro un lampione; un vagabondo può appoggiarsi a un lampione; un ubriaco può abbracciare un lampione o persino, in un momento più allegro, tentare di arrampicarsi su un lampione. Ma non è un tipo di conoscenza strano o specialistico notare, a proposito di un lampione, che esso ha una lampada.
Now secular education really means that everybody shall make a point of looking down at the pavement, lest by some fatal chance somebody should look up at the lamp. The lamp of faith that did in fact illuminate the street for the mass of mankind in most ages of history, was not only a wandering fire seen floating in the air by visionaries; it was also for most people the explanation of the post. If a low cloud like a London fog must indeed cover that flame, then it is an objective fact that the object will remain chiefly as an object to be bumped into. I am not blaming anybody who can only manage to regard the world in that highly objective light. Even if the lamp-post appears as a post without a lamp, and therefore a post without a purpose, it may be possible to take different views of it. The stoic, like the tramp, may lean on it; the optimist, like the drunkard, may embrace it; the progressive may attempt to climb it, and so on. So it is with those who merely bump into a headless world as into a lampless post; to whom the world is a large objective obstacle. I only say that there is a difference, and not a small or secondary difference, between those who know and those who do not know what the post is for.
The deepest of all desires for knowledge is the desire to know what the world is for and what we are for. Those who believe they can answer that question must at least be allowed to answer it as the first question and not as the last. A man who cannot answer it has a right to refuse to answer it; though perhaps he is rather too prone to comfort himself with the very dogmatic dogma that nobody else can answer it if he can’t. But no man has a right to answer it, or even to arrange for it being answered, as if it were a sort of peculiar and pedantic additional question, which only a peculiar and pedantic sort of pupil would be likely to ask. Secular education is more sensible than making religion one of the extras; like learning fret-work or Portuguese. And this principle is important in the controversy about religious education, because it involves the whole question which was so prominent in the controversy, the question of what is called ‘atmosphere’. All that it means is, that anybody who has a right to answer this question has a right to answer it as if it were the sort of question that it is; a question affecting the nature of the whole world and the purpose of every part of human life. If a man is to teach religion, it is absurd to ask him to teach it as if it were something else, that did not apply to all the activities of man. The expression ‘a religious hour’ is something very like a contradiction in terms. And it is amusing to note that the same casual sceptic who is always sneering at the orthodox for their forms and limitations, who is always talking of their Sunday religion and their separation of things sacred and profane, is generally the very man who is most ready to make fun of the idea of a religious atmosphere in the schools. That is to say he of all people objects most to sacred and profane things being united and to a religion that works on week-days as well as on Sundays. The truth is that the idea of atmosphere is simply a piece of the elementary psychology of children. In any other matter, these people would be the first to tell us that education must take note of all the influences forming the mind, however apparently light or accidental. They will go wild with dismay if the child has to look at the wrong wall-paper; they will set themselves seriously to see that he has the right picture of the wombat; but they tell us not to trouble whether he has the right picture of the world.
I am not implying, of course, that there is no value in a secular social enthusiasm; or even that, in the language that some use sincerely and even usefully, it may not deserve to be called religion. What I doubt is whether it can in this sense deserve to be called reason. It does not satisfy the primary intellectual hunger about the meaning of life, that certain people may mean well, even when they doubt whether it means anything. The truth is that there is implied in almost all idealism a number of ideas which the idealists have seldom really followed out as ideas. There is the notion of a choice that is mysteriously offered and followed by equally mysterious consequences; of a mystical value attached to one part of our nature without any authority to value it; of a sort of ultimate tryst with nobody in particular; in short all the rich tints of a London fog surrounding a lamp-post without a lamp. I am very far from lacking in respect for all this groping idealism; I only say, that by its own confession, it is very incomplete compared with that of anybody who has a complete philosophy, because he has a creed. And I mean no offence when I say that anybody who has this sort of education is literally a half-educated person.
But there is another aspect of the case, which illustrates the real truth in the rather rustic Puritanism of the people who made a fuss about Darwinism in Dayton. To some of us it seems strange that such very antiquated Protestantism should be supposed to represent religion. It seems stranger that such very antiquated Darwinism should be supposed to represent science. But as a matter of fact the protest and prosecution on that occasion did represent something. It stood for a strong popular instinct, not without justification, that science is being made to mean more than science ever really says. An evolutionary education is something very different from an education about evolution. Just as a religious school openly and avowedly gives a religious atmosphere, as a scientific class does sometimes covertly or unconsciously give a materialistic atmosphere. A secularist teacher has just as much difficulty as a priest would have, in not giving his own answer to the questions that are most worth answering. He also is a little annoyed at not being allowed to put the first things first. He tends more and more to turn his science into a philosophy. It makes the matter too disputable and provocative perhaps to call that philosophy materialistic. It is more polite and equally pointed to call it monistic. But the point is that this philosophy has in it something altogether alien, not only to all religions that refer back to the will of God, but even to all moralities that revolve upon the will of man. Rightly or wrongly, its image of the universe is not that of a post put up with the design of having a lamp on it; it is rather that of a post that grew like a tree; a lamp-post that eventually grew its own lamp. Now considering this vision of vague growth simply as an atmosphere and an impression on the minds of the young, (apart from its truth or falsehood) there is no doubt that it tends so far as it goes to the notion of most things being much of a muchness, being all equally inevitable fruits of the same tree; and certainly not towards the idea of moral choice and conflict; of a contrast between black and white or a battle between light and darkness.
Ora l’educazione laica significa in realtà che tutti debbano premurarsi di guardare in basso, verso il selciato, per timore che, per qualche fatale accidente, qualcuno alzi lo sguardo verso il lampione. La lampada della fede che di fatto illuminava la strada per la massa dell’umanità nella maggior parte delle epoche della storia non era soltanto un fuoco errante veduto fluttuare nell’aria dai visionari; era anche, per la maggior parte delle persone, la spiegazione del palo. Se una nube bassa come una nebbia di Londra deve davvero coprire quella fiamma, allora è un dato oggettivo che l’oggetto rimarrà principalmente come un oggetto contro cui andare a sbattere. Non biasimo nessuno che riesca soltanto a considerare il mondo sotto quella luce così spiccatamente oggettiva. Anche se il lampione appare come un palo senza lampada, e dunque come un palo senza scopo, è forse possibile assumerne diverse vedute. Lo stoico, come il vagabondo, può appoggiarvisi; l’ottimista, come l’ubriaco, può abbracciarlo; il progressista può tentare di arrampicarvisi, e così via. Altrettanto avviene per coloro che semplicemente cozzano contro un mondo senza testa come contro un palo senza lampada; per i quali il mondo è un grande ostacolo oggettivo. Dico soltanto che vi è una differenza, e non una differenza piccola o secondaria, tra coloro che sanno e coloro che non sanno a che cosa serva il palo.
Il più profondo di tutti i desideri di conoscenza è il desiderio di sapere a che cosa serva il mondo e a che cosa serviamo noi. A coloro che credono di poter rispondere a quella domanda si deve almeno concedere di rispondervi come alla prima domanda e non come all’ultima. Un uomo che non sa rispondervi ha il diritto di rifiutarsi di rispondervi; benché forse egli sia fin troppo incline a consolarsi col dogma assai dogmatico che nessun altro possa rispondervi se non può lui. Ma nessun uomo ha il diritto di rispondervi, o anche solo di disporre che vi si risponda, come se fosse una sorta di peculiare e pedantesca domanda aggiuntiva, che soltanto un peculiare e pedantesco tipo di allievo sarebbe portato a porre. L’educazione laica è più sensata che fare della religione uno degli extra; come imparare il traforo o il portoghese. E questo principio è importante nella controversia sull’educazione religiosa, perché coinvolge l’intera questione che tanto spiccava in quella controversia, la questione di ciò che si chiama «atmosfera». Tutto ciò che essa significa è che chiunque abbia il diritto di rispondere a questa domanda ha il diritto di rispondervi come se fosse il genere di domanda che è; una domanda che investe la natura del mondo intero e lo scopo di ogni parte della vita umana. Se un uomo deve insegnare la religione, è assurdo chiedergli di insegnarla come se fosse qualcos’altro, che non riguardasse tutte le attività dell’uomo. L’espressione «un’ora di religione» è qualcosa di molto simile a una contraddizione in termini. Ed è divertente notare che il medesimo scettico disinvolto che sempre sogghigna sugli ortodossi per le loro forme e limitazioni, che sempre parla della loro religione domenicale e della loro separazione tra cose sacre e profane, è generalmente proprio l’uomo più pronto a farsi beffe dell’idea di un’atmosfera religiosa nelle scuole. Vale a dire che egli, più di ogni altro, obietta all’unione di cose sacre e profane e a una religione che operi nei giorni feriali così come di domenica. La verità è che l’idea di atmosfera è semplicemente un tassello dell’elementare psicologia dei bambini. In qualsiasi altra materia, queste persone sarebbero le prime a dirci che l’educazione deve tener conto di tutte le influenze che formano la mente, per quanto apparentemente lievi o accidentali. Andranno fuori di sé per lo sgomento se il bambino deve guardare la carta da parati sbagliata; si adopereranno seriamente perché egli abbia la giusta immagine del vombato; ma ci dicono di non curarci se egli abbia la giusta immagine del mondo.
Non voglio dire, naturalmente, che non vi sia alcun valore in un entusiasmo sociale laico; e neppure che, nel linguaggio che alcuni usano sinceramente e persino utilmente, esso non possa meritare di essere chiamato religione. Ciò di cui dubito è se possa in questo senso meritare di essere chiamato ragione. Non soddisfa la primaria fame intellettuale circa il significato della vita il fatto che certe persone possano essere ben intenzionate, anche quando dubitano che essa abbia un qualche significato. La verità è che in quasi ogni idealismo è implicito un certo numero di idee che gli idealisti hanno di rado davvero seguito fino in fondo come idee. Vi è la nozione di una scelta che viene misteriosamente offerta e seguita da conseguenze altrettanto misteriose; di un valore mistico attribuito a una parte della nostra natura senza alcuna autorità che la valuti; di una sorta di ultimo appuntamento con nessuno in particolare; in breve, tutte le ricche tinte di una nebbia di Londra che avvolge un lampione senza lampada. Sono ben lungi dal mancare di rispetto verso tutto questo brancolante idealismo; dico soltanto che, per sua stessa ammissione, esso è assai incompleto in confronto a quello di chiunque abbia una completa filosofia, perché ha un credo. E non intendo offendere nel dire che chiunque abbia questo tipo di educazione è, letteralmente, una persona a metà istruita.
Ma vi è un altro aspetto della questione, che illustra la vera verità contenuta nel piuttosto rustico puritanesimo di coloro che fecero tanto chiasso a proposito del darwinismo a Dayton. Ad alcuni di noi pare strano che un protestantesimo tanto antiquato debba essere ritenuto rappresentativo della religione. Pare ancora più strano che un darwinismo tanto antiquato debba essere ritenuto rappresentativo della scienza. Ma in realtà la protesta e il processo in quell’occasione rappresentavano qualcosa. Stavano per un forte istinto popolare, non privo di giustificazione, secondo cui si fa dire alla scienza più di quanto la scienza mai dica realmente. Un’educazione evoluzionistica è cosa assai diversa da un’educazione sull’evoluzione. Proprio come una scuola religiosa dà apertamente e dichiaratamente un’atmosfera religiosa, così una classe di scienze talvolta dà, in modo occulto o inconsapevole, un’atmosfera materialistica. Un insegnante laico incontra la stessa difficoltà che incontrerebbe un sacerdote nel non dare la propria risposta alle domande che più meritano una risposta. Anch’egli è un po’ seccato di non poter mettere le prime cose al primo posto. Tende sempre più a mutare la sua scienza in una filosofia. Rende forse la questione troppo controvertibile e provocatoria chiamare quella filosofia materialistica. È più cortese e ugualmente pungente chiamarla monistica. Ma il punto è che questa filosofia ha in sé qualcosa di del tutto alieno non solo a tutte le religioni che si richiamano alla volontà di Dio, ma anche a tutte le morali che ruotano attorno alla volontà dell’uomo. A torto o a ragione, la sua immagine dell’universo non è quella di un palo eretto col disegno di avervi sopra una lampada; è piuttosto quella di un palo cresciuto come un albero; un lampione che alla fine si è fatto crescere la propria lampada. Ora, considerando questa visione di vaga crescita semplicemente come un’atmosfera e un’impressione sulle menti dei giovani, (a prescindere dalla sua verità o falsità) non vi è dubbio che essa tende, per quanto le è dato, alla nozione che la maggior parte delle cose si equivalgano più o meno, che siano tutte ugualmente inevitabili frutti del medesimo albero; e certamente non verso l’idea della scelta e del conflitto morale; di un contrasto tra bianco e nero o di una battaglia tra luce e tenebra.
I am not writing controversially or trying to pin anybody with this as an individual necessity. I am writing educationally and considering the probable psychological impression of certain atmospheres and fine shades. I say that a great deal of evolution in education would not make that education very insistent on the ideas of free will and fighting morality; of dramatic choice and challenge. Why should one fruit challenge another fruit on the same tree; or how can there be a black and white choice between its slow gradations of green? So that even if we ignore the primary question of religion in the sense of the purpose of creation, there is the same sort of problem about religion even if we use it in the sense of the purpose of doing good. If a man believes that there is between vice and virtue a chasm like that of life and death, he will want to say so. And if other people only say that everything is a growth of evolution, he will not admit that they have said what he wishes to say. It is not merely a question of secular education that seems indifferent to religion, but of scientific education that seems rather indifferent to ethics. I am talking about educational effects, as educationists do; and decline any sort of sentimental recrimination about the pure and noble aims of men of science. Many who would despise anything so classical as the teaching of rhetoric, are always ready with any amount of rhetoric in praise of the teaching of science. I am not attacking the teaching of science, still less the teachers of science; I am saying the teaching of evolution, if it becomes an atmosphere, cannot be an atmosphere favourable to moral fire or a fighting spirit. To put it shortly, the teaching of evolution is hardly the training for revolution.
It is hardly likely to give a special strength to the feeling that some things are intrinsically intolerable or other things imperatively just. When a reformer can only say to a slave-driver, “You are evolving too slow; you ought to have emerged from the slave-state,” the slave-driver has only to answer, “You are evolving too fast; you ought to wait for the twenty-first century.” Such an argument will hardly set in a flame the fanaticism of Harper’s Ferry. It seems to me, therefore, that the poor Puritans of Tennessee are not altogether wrong, as a matter of educational psychology, if they say that evolutionary education, even if it is not an attack on Christian doctrine, may become an atmosphere very alien to Christian morals; or indeed any manly and combative sort of morals. After the doctrine that existence is a thing of design, the next most interesting doctrine is that life is a thing of choice; and even if men were all taught to be atheists, I doubt whether mere evolutionism would have taught them to be really spirited and warlike atheists. And to see atheists lose their one great virtue of ferocity would indeed be a serious loss to religion.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ISLANDS
From The Venture Annual, 1903
Suppose that in some convulsion of the planets there fell upon this earth from Mars, a creature of a shape totally unfamiliar, a creature about whose actual structure we were of necessity so dark that we could not tell which was creature and which was clothes. We could see that it had, say, six red tufts on its head, but we should not know whether they were a highly respectable head-covering or simply a head. We should see that the tail ended in three yellow stars, but it would be difficult for us to know whether this was part of a ritual or simply a tail. Well, man has been from the beginning of time this unknown monster. People have always differed about what part of him belonged to himself, and what part was merely an accident. People have said successively that it was natural to him to do everything and anything that was diverse and mutually contradictory; that it was natural to him to worship God, and natural to him to be an atheist; natural to him to drink water, and natural to him to drink wine; natural to him to be equal, natural to be unequal; natural to obey kings, natural to kill them. The divergence is quite sufficient to justify us in asking if there are not many things that are really natural, which really appear early and strong in every normal human being, which are not embodied in any of his after affairs. Whether there are not morbidities which are as fresh and recurrent as the flowers of spring. Whether there are not superstitions whose darkness is as wholesome as the darkness that falls nightly on all living things. Whether we have not treated things essential as portents; whether we have not seen the sun as a meteor, a star of ill-luck.
It would at least appear that we tend to become separated from what is really natural, by the fact that we always talk about those people who are really natural as if they were goblins. There are three classes of people, for instance, who are in a greater or less degree elemental: children, poor people, and to some extent, and in a darker and more terrible manner, women. The reason why men have from the beginning of literature talked about women as if they were more or less mad, is simply because women are natural, and men, with their formalities and social theories, are very artificial. It is the same with children; children are simply human beings who are allowed to do what everyone else really desires to do, as for instance, to fly kites, or when seriously wronged to emit prolonged screams for several minutes. So again, the poor man is simply a person who expends upon treating himself and his friends in public houses about the same proportion of his income as richer people spend on dinners or cabs; that is, a great deal more than he ought. But nothing can be done until people give up talking about these people as if they were too eccentric for us to understand, when, as a matter of fact, if there is any eccentricity involved, we are too eccentric to understand them. A poor man, as it is weirdly ordained, is definable as a man who has not got much money; to hear philanthropists talk about him one would think he was a kangaroo. A child is a human being who has not grown up; to hear educationists talk one would think he was some variety of a deep-sea fish. The case of the sexes is at once more obvious and more difficult. The stoic philosophy and the early church discussed woman as if she were an institution, and in many cases decided to abolish her. The modern feminine output of literature discusses man as if he were an institution, and decides to abolish him. It can only timidly be suggested that neither man nor woman is an institution, but things that are really quite natural and all over the place.
Non scrivo in tono polemico, né cerco d’inchiodare alcuno a questo come a una necessità individuale. Scrivo con intento educativo, e considero la probabile impressione psicologica di certe atmosfere e sottili sfumature. Affermo che una grande evoluzione nell’educazione non renderebbe quell’educazione molto insistente sulle idee del libero arbitrio e della moralità combattiva; della scelta drammatica e della sfida. Perché mai un frutto dovrebbe sfidare un altro frutto sullo stesso albero; o come può esservi una scelta netta, in bianco e nero, tra le sue lente gradazioni di verde? Cosicché, anche se ignoriamo la questione primaria della religione nel senso dello scopo della creazione, si ripresenta lo stesso genere di problema riguardo alla religione, anche se la usiamo nel senso dello scopo di fare il bene. Se un uomo crede che tra il vizio e la virtù vi sia un abisso come quello tra la vita e la morte, vorrà dirlo. E se altri si limitano a dire che tutto è uno sviluppo dell’evoluzione, egli non ammetterà che essi abbiano detto ciò che egli desidera dire. Non si tratta soltanto di un’educazione laica che sembra indifferente alla religione, ma di un’educazione scientifica che sembra piuttosto indifferente all’etica. Parlo di effetti educativi, come fanno gli educatori; e rifiuto ogni sorta di sentimentale recriminazione sui fini puri e nobili degli uomini di scienza. Molti che disprezzerebbero qualcosa di tanto classico come l’insegnamento della retorica, sono sempre pronti a una qualsiasi quantità di retorica in lode dell’insegnamento della scienza. Non attacco l’insegnamento della scienza, e ancor meno gli insegnanti di scienza; dico che l’insegnamento dell’evoluzione, se diventa un’atmosfera, non può essere un’atmosfera favorevole al fuoco morale o a uno spirito combattivo. Per dirla in breve, l’insegnamento dell’evoluzione non è certo l’addestramento per la rivoluzione.
Difficilmente esso è capace di dare una forza particolare alla sensazione che alcune cose siano intrinsecamente intollerabili o altre imperativamente giuste. Quando un riformatore può solo dire a uno schiavista: «Ti evolvi troppo lentamente; avresti dovuto emergere dallo stato di schiavitù», lo schiavista non ha che da rispondere: «Ti evolvi troppo in fretta; dovresti aspettare il ventunesimo secolo». Un simile argomento difficilmente infiammerà il fanatismo di Harper’s Ferry. Mi pare, dunque, che i poveri Puritani del Tennessee non abbiano affatto torto, come questione di psicologia educativa, se dicono che l’educazione evoluzionistica, anche se non è un attacco alla dottrina cristiana, può diventare un’atmosfera molto estranea alla morale cristiana; o anzi a qualsiasi genere di morale virile e combattiva. Dopo la dottrina che l’esistenza è cosa di disegno, la dottrina più interessante che segue è che la vita è cosa di scelta; e anche se tutti gli uomini fossero educati a essere atei, dubito che il mero evoluzionismo avrebbe insegnato loro a essere atei davvero animosi e bellicosi. E vedere gli atei perdere la loro unica grande virtù, la ferocia, sarebbe davvero una grave perdita per la religione.
LA FILOSOFIA DELLE ISOLE
Da The Venture Annual, 1903
Supponiamo che, in qualche convulsione dei pianeti, cadesse su questa terra da Marte una creatura di forma del tutto sconosciuta, una creatura sulla cui reale struttura fossimo per necessità così all’oscuro da non poter dire quale parte fosse creatura e quale fosse veste. Potremmo vedere che ha, poniamo, sei ciuffi rossi sul capo, ma non sapremmo se si tratti di un copricapo assai rispettabile o semplicemente di una testa. Vedremmo che la coda termina in tre stelle gialle, ma ci sarebbe difficile sapere se ciò fosse parte di un rituale o semplicemente una coda. Ebbene, l’uomo è stato, dall’inizio del tempo, questo ignoto mostro. La gente ha sempre differito su quale parte di lui gli appartenesse e quale parte fosse un mero accidente. La gente ha detto, di volta in volta, che gli era naturale fare ogni cosa e qualsiasi cosa diversa e mutuamente contraddittoria; che gli era naturale adorare Dio, e naturale essere ateo; naturale bere acqua, e naturale bere vino; naturale essere uguale, naturale essere diseguale; naturale obbedire ai re, naturale ucciderli. La divergenza è del tutto sufficiente a giustificarci nel chiederci se non vi siano molte cose che sono realmente naturali, che appaiono realmente presto e con forza in ogni essere umano normale, che non sono incarnate in nessuna delle sue faccende successive. Se non vi siano morbosità fresche e ricorrenti come i fiori di primavera. Se non vi siano superstizioni la cui oscurità è sana quanto l’oscurità che cala ogni notte su tutte le cose viventi. Se non abbiamo trattato come portenti cose essenziali; se non abbiamo veduto il sole come una meteora, una stella di malaugurio.
Parrebbe almeno che noi tendiamo a separarci da ciò che è realmente naturale, per il fatto che parliamo sempre di quelle persone che sono realmente naturali come se fossero folletti. Vi sono tre classi di persone, per esempio, che sono in grado maggiore o minore elementari: i bambini, i poveri, e in una certa misura, e in maniera più oscura e più terribile, le donne. La ragione per cui gli uomini hanno, dall’inizio della letteratura, parlato delle donne come se fossero più o meno folli, è semplicemente che le donne sono naturali, e gli uomini, con le loro formalità e le loro teorie sociali, sono assai artificiali. Lo stesso vale per i bambini; i bambini sono semplicemente esseri umani a cui è permesso fare ciò che ogni altro in realtà desidera fare, come per esempio far volare aquiloni, o, quando gravemente offesi, emettere prolungate strida per parecchi minuti. Così, di nuovo, il povero è semplicemente una persona che spende, per trattar sé e i propri amici nelle osterie, all’incirca la stessa proporzione del proprio reddito che le persone più ricche spendono in pranzi o in carrozze; vale a dire, assai più di quanto dovrebbe. Ma nulla si può fare finché la gente non smette di parlare di queste persone come se fossero troppo eccentriche perché noi le si comprenda, quando, in realtà, se vi è eccentricità in gioco, siamo noi troppo eccentrici per comprenderle. Un povero, come è stranamente ordinato, è definibile come un uomo che non ha molto denaro; a sentir parlare i filantropi si penserebbe che fosse un canguro. Un bambino è un essere umano che non è cresciuto; a sentir parlare gli educatori si penserebbe che fosse qualche varietà di pesce abissale. Il caso dei sessi è insieme più ovvio e più difficile. La filosofia stoica e la Chiesa primitiva discutevano la donna come se fosse un’istituzione, e in molti casi decisero di abolirla. La moderna produzione letteraria femminile discute l’uomo come se fosse un’istituzione, e decide di abolirlo. Si può soltanto timidamente suggerire che né l’uomo né la donna sono un’istituzione, ma cose che sono in realtà del tutto naturali e disseminate dovunque.
If we take children, for instance, as examples of the uncorrupted human animal, we see that the very things which appear in them in a manner primary and prominent, are the very things that philosophers have taught us to regard as sophisticated and over-civilized. The things which really come first are the things which we are accustomed to think come last. The instinct for a pompous intricate and recurring ceremonial, for instance, comes to a child like an organic hunger; he asks for a formality as he might ask for a drink of water.
Those who think, for instance, that the thing called superstition is something heavily artificial, are very numerous; that is those who think that it has only been the power of priests or of some very deliberate system that has built up boundaries, that has called one course of action lawful and another unlawful, that has called one piece of ground sacred and another profane. Nothing it would seem, except a large and powerful conspiracy could account for men so strangely distinguishing between one field and another, between one city and another, between one nation and another. To all those who think in this way there is only one answer to be given. It is to approach each of them and whisper in his ear: “Did you or did you not as a child try to step on every alternate paving-stone? Was that artificial and a superstition? Did priests come in the dead of night and mark out by secret signs the stones on which you are allowed to tread? Were children threatened with the oubliette or the fire of Smithfield if they failed to step on the right stone? Has the Church issued a bill ‘Quisquam non pavemente’?” No! On this point on which we were really free, we invented our servitude. We chose to say that between the first and the third paving-stone there was an abyss of the eternal darkness into which we must not fall. We were walking along a steady and safe and modern road, and it was more pleasant to us to say that we were leaping desperately from peak to peak. Under mean and oppressive systems it was no doubt our instinct to free ourselves. But this truth written on the paving-stones is of even greater emphasis, that under liberal systems it was our instinct to limit ourselves. We limited ourselves so gladly that we limited ourselves at random, as if limitation were one of the adventures of boyhood.
People sometimes talk as if everything in the religious history of man had been done by officials. In all probability things like the Dionysian cult or the worship of the Virgin were almost entirely forced by the people on the priesthood. And if children had been
sufficiently powerful in the State, there is no reason why this paving-stone religion should not have been accepted also. There is no reason why the streets up which we walk should not be emblazoned so as to commemorate the memory of a superstition as healthy as health itself.
For what is the idea in human nature which lies at the back of this almost automatic ceremonialism? Why is it that a child who would be furious if told by his nurse not to walk off the kerbstone, invents a whole desperate system of footholds and chasms in a plane in which his nurse can see little but a commodious level? It is because man has
always had the instinct that to isolate a thing was to identify it. The flag only becomes a flag when it is unique; the nation only becomes a nation when it is surrounded; the hero only becomes a hero when he has before him and behind him men who are not heroes; the paving-stone only becomes a paving stone when it has before it and behind it things that are not paving stones.
There are two other obvious instances, of course, of the same instinct; the perennial poetry of islands, and the perennial poetry of ships. A ship like the Argo or the Fram is valued by the mind because it is an island, because, that is, it carries with it, floating loose on the desolate elements, the resources, and rules and trades, and treasuries of a nation, because it has ranks, and shops and streets, and the whole clinging like a few limpets to a lost spar. An island like Ithaca or England is valued by the mind because it is a ship, because it can find itself alone and self-dependent in a waste of water, because its orchards and forests can be numbered like bales of merchandise, because its corn can be counted like gold, because the starriest and dreariest snows upon its most forsaken peaks are silver flags flown from familiar masts, because its dimmest and most inhuman mines of coal or lead below the roots of things are definite chattels stored awkwardly in the lowest locker of the hold.
In truth, nothing has so much spoilt the right artistic attitude as the continual use of such words as ‘infinite’ and ‘immeasurable’. They were used rightly enough in religion, because religion, by its very nature, consists of paradoxes. Religion speaks of an identity which is
infinite, just as it spoke of an identity that was at once one and three, just as it might possibly and rightly speak of an identity that was at once black and white.
The old mystics spoke of an existence without end or a happiness without end, with a deliberate defiance, as they might have spoken of a bird without wings or a sea without water. And in this they were right philosophically, far more right than the world would now admit because all things grow more paradoxical as we approach the central truth. But for all human imaginative or artistic purposes nothing worse could be said of a work of beauty than that it is infinite; for to be infinite is to be shapeless, and to be shapeless is to be something more than mis-shapen. No man really wishes a thing which he believes to be divine to be in this earthly sense infinite. No one would really like a song to last for ever, or a religious service to last for ever, or even a glass of good ale to last for ever. And this is surely the reason that men have pursued towards the idea of holiness, the course that they have pursued; that they have marked it out in particular spaces, limited it to particular days, worshipped an ivory statue, worshipped a lump of stone. They have desired to give to it the chivalry and dignity of definition, they have desired to save it from the degradation of infinity. This is the real weakness of all imperial or conquering ideals in nationality. No one can love his country with the particular affection which is appropriate to the relation, if he thinks it is a thing in its nature indeterminate, something which is growing in the night, something which lacks the tense excitement of a boundary. No Roman citizen could feel the same when once it became possible for a rich Parthian or a rich Carthaginian to become a Roman citizen by waving his hand. No man wishes the thing he loves to grow, for he does not wish it to alter. No man would be pleased if he came home in the evening from work and found his wife eight feet high.
The dangers upon the side of this transcendental insularity are no doubt considerable. There lies in it primarily the great danger of the thing called idolatry, the worship of the object apart from or against the idea it represents. But he must surely have had a singular
experience who thinks that this insular or idolatrous fault is the particular fault of one age. We are likely to suffer primary painful resemblance to the men of Thermopylae, the Zealots, who raged round the fall of Jerusalem. If we are rushing upon any destruction it is not, at least, upon this.
Se prendiamo i bambini, per esempio, come esemplari dell’incorrotto animale umano, vediamo che proprio le cose che in essi appaiono in maniera primaria e prominente sono proprio le cose che i filosofi ci hanno insegnato a considerare sofisticate e ipercivilizzate. Le cose che vengono davvero per prime sono le cose che siamo soliti pensare vengano per ultime. L’istinto per un cerimoniale pomposo, intricato e ricorrente, per esempio, viene a un bambino come una fame organica; egli chiede una formalità come potrebbe chiedere un sorso d’acqua.
Coloro che pensano, per esempio, che la cosa chiamata superstizione sia qualcosa di pesantemente artificiale sono assai numerosi; sono cioè coloro che pensano che sia stato solo il potere dei preti o di qualche sistema assai deliberato a costruire i confini, a chiamare lecita una linea di condotta e illecita un’altra, a chiamare sacro un pezzo di terra e profano un altro. Nulla, parrebbe, se non una vasta e potente cospirazione, potrebbe rendere conto di uomini che così stranamente distinguono tra un campo e un altro, tra una città e un’altra, tra una nazione e un’altra. A tutti coloro che pensano in questo modo non vi è che una sola risposta da dare. È accostare ciascuno di loro e sussurrargli all’orecchio: «Da bambino, hai tu o non hai cercato di posare il piede su una pietra sì e una no del selciato? Era questo artificiale, ed era superstizione? Vennero i preti nel cuore della notte a segnare con segni segreti le pietre su cui ti è concesso di calpestare? Furono i bambini minacciati dell’oubliette o del fuoco di Smithfield se non riuscivano a posare il piede sulla pietra giusta? Ha forse la Chiesa emanato una bolla ‘Quisquam non pavemente’?» No! Su questo punto, sul quale eravamo davvero liberi, inventammo la nostra servitù. Scegliemmo di dire che tra la prima e la terza pietra del selciato vi era un abisso di eterna tenebra in cui non dovevamo cadere. Camminavamo lungo una strada ferma, sicura e moderna, e ci era più gradevole dire che saltavamo disperatamente di vetta in vetta. Sotto sistemi meschini e oppressivi era senza dubbio nostro istinto liberarci. Ma questa verità scritta sulle pietre del selciato ha un rilievo ancor più grande: che sotto sistemi liberali era nostro istinto limitarci. Ci limitammo così volentieri che ci limitammo a caso, come se la limitazione fosse una delle avventure della fanciullezza.
La gente talvolta parla come se tutto, nella storia religiosa dell’uomo, fosse stato fatto da funzionari. Con ogni probabilità cose come il culto dionisiaco o il culto della Vergine furono quasi interamente imposte dal popolo al sacerdozio. E se i bambini fossero stati
sufficientemente potenti nello Stato, non vi è ragione per cui anche questa religione del selciato non avrebbe dovuto essere accolta. Non vi è ragione per cui le strade lungo le quali camminiamo non dovrebbero essere blasonate così da commemorare la memoria di una superstizione sana quanto la salute stessa.
Poiché qual è l’idea, nella natura umana, che sta dietro a questo cerimonialismo quasi automatico? Perché mai un bambino, che andrebbe su tutte le furie se la balia gli dicesse di non scendere dall’orlo del marciapiede, inventa un intero disperato sistema di appigli e di abissi in un piano in cui la sua balia non scorge quasi altro che un comodo livello? È perché l’uomo ha
sempre avuto l’istinto che isolare una cosa fosse identificarla. La bandiera diventa bandiera solo quando è unica; la nazione diventa nazione solo quando è circondata; l’eroe diventa eroe solo quando ha davanti a sé e dietro di sé uomini che non sono eroi; la pietra del selciato diventa pietra del selciato solo quando ha davanti a sé e dietro di sé cose che non sono pietre del selciato.
Vi sono, naturalmente, altri due ovvi esempi dello stesso istinto: la perenne poesia delle isole e la perenne poesia delle navi. Una nave come l’Argo o la Fram è pregiata dalla mente perché è un’isola, perché, cioè, porta con sé, galleggiante alla deriva sugli elementi desolati, le risorse, le regole, i commerci e i tesori di una nazione, perché ha ranghi, botteghe e strade, il tutto aggrappato come poche patelle a un albero perduto. Un’isola come Itaca o l’Inghilterra è pregiata dalla mente perché è una nave, perché può ritrovarsi sola e autosufficiente in una distesa d’acqua, perché i suoi frutteti e le sue foreste possono essere contati come balle di mercanzia, perché il suo grano può essere contato come oro, perché le nevi più stellate e più tetre sulle sue vette più abbandonate sono vessilli d’argento issati da alberi familiari, perché le sue miniere di carbone o di piombo più fioche e più inumane, sotto le radici delle cose, sono precisi beni immagazzinati goffamente nell’armadietto più basso della stiva.
In verità, nulla ha tanto guastato la giusta attitudine artistica quanto l’uso continuo di parole come ‘infinito’ e ‘incommensurabile’. Erano usate abbastanza giustamente nella religione, perché la religione, per sua stessa natura, consiste di paradossi. La religione parla di un’identità che è
infinita, così come parlava di un’identità che era a un tempo una e trina, così come potrebbe forse, e a ragione, parlare di un’identità che fosse a un tempo bianca e nera.
I vecchi mistici parlavano di un’esistenza senza fine o di una felicità senza fine, con una deliberata sfida, come avrebbero potuto parlare di un uccello senza ali o di un mare senz’acqua. E in questo avevano ragione filosoficamente, assai più ragione di quanto il mondo ora ammetterebbe, perché tutte le cose diventano più paradossali man mano che ci avviciniamo alla verità centrale. Ma per tutti gli scopi umani, immaginativi o artistici, nulla di peggio si potrebbe dire di un’opera di bellezza se non che è infinita; poiché essere infinito è essere informe, ed essere informe è essere qualcosa di più che malformato. Nessun uomo desidera davvero che una cosa che crede divina sia, in questo senso terreno, infinita. Nessuno vorrebbe davvero che una canzone durasse per sempre, o che una funzione religiosa durasse per sempre, o persino che un bicchiere di buona birra durasse per sempre. E questa è certo la ragione per cui gli uomini hanno perseguito, verso l’idea della santità, il corso che hanno perseguito; per cui l’hanno delimitata in spazi particolari, l’hanno limitata a giorni particolari, hanno adorato una statua d’avorio, hanno adorato un blocco di pietra. Hanno desiderato darle la cavalleria e la dignità della definizione, hanno desiderato salvarla dalla degradazione dell’infinito. Questa è la vera debolezza di tutti gli ideali imperiali o conquistatori nella nazionalità. Nessuno può amare il proprio paese con quel particolare affetto che è appropriato al rapporto, se pensa che esso sia una cosa di natura indeterminata, qualcosa che cresce nella notte, qualcosa a cui manca la tesa eccitazione di un confine. Nessun cittadino romano poteva provare lo stesso una volta che divenne possibile a un ricco Parto o a un ricco Cartaginese diventare cittadino romano con un cenno della mano. Nessun uomo desidera che la cosa che ama cresca, poiché non desidera che essa muti. Nessun uomo sarebbe lieto se, tornando a casa la sera dal lavoro, trovasse la moglie alta otto piedi.
I pericoli dal lato di questa insularità trascendentale sono senza dubbio considerevoli. In essa risiede anzitutto il grande pericolo della cosa chiamata idolatria, l’adorazione dell’oggetto separatamente da, o contro, l’idea che esso rappresenta. Ma deve certo aver avuto una singolare
esperienza chi pensa che questa colpa insulare o idolatrica sia la colpa particolare di una sola epoca. È probabile che soffriamo di una primaria e dolorosa somiglianza con gli uomini delle Termopili, gli Zeloti, che infuriarono attorno alla caduta di Gerusalemme. Se ci stiamo precipitando verso qualche rovina, non è, almeno, verso questa.
PART FOUR: AT HOME AND ABROAD
ON HOLIDAYS
THERE ARE epochs of history which their enemies call rude and which their friends call simple. My difficulty is that they seem to me not simple, but subtle. They understood much better than we do the idea of variety and reaction. For them emancipation was a recoil and not merely a release. The world must be turned upside down at absolute intervals, as a bucket must be turned upside down in order to empty it. It is the essence of a holiday that it must be a revolution, and it is the essence of a revolution that it must revolve. A revolution far more frightful and overwhelming than any of the revolutions of history happens every twelve hours. We do, quite seriously, die daily. We trust ourselves in utter dark and dissolution; in such black sleep as has killed many men by a drug or by the drifting snow. Each of us has every night an enormous negative holiday. But most will agree, I think, that the essence of that holiday is its irresponsibility. The legal authorities would be kept busy if we could be indicted for the crimes we have committed in dreams. Now the whole point of a holiday was to be, within certain rational restraints, irresponsible. Interfering with a holiday was almost like interfering with a dream. And the whole project of using holidays as anything else but holidays was really absent from the mind. The notion of ‘combining amusement with instruction’ would have seemed like the notion of combining sleep with insomnia. Great spiritual authorities have told us to watch and pray. Great spiritual influences, I think, also tell us to believe and sleep. But neither god nor priest nor devil ever had the impudence to tell us to watch and sleep.
And that is the contradiction made by the modern cranks about holidays. It would be a typical and triumphant work of modern science to take charge of a child day and night; to give him the drugs that would keep him half asleep all day, and the dreams that would keep him half awake all night.
In this connection I think the educational arrangement about holidays has long been a ludicrous mistake. Holiday tasks are a mistake. Home-work is a mistake. Give the boy or girl less holidays if you think they need less. But be sufficiently businesslike to get the best out of the boy or girl for whatever concession you make to them. If you can excuse anyone from work, you can excuse him from worry. Leisure is a food, like sleep; liberty is a food, like sleep. Leisure is a matter of quality rather than quantity. Five minutes lasts longer when one cannot be disturbed than five hours when one may be disturbed. Restrict the liberty in point of time; restrict it in point of space; but do not restrict it in point of quality. If you give somebody only three seconds’ holiday—then, by all the remains of your ruined sense of honour, leave him alone for three seconds.
Let me take an example which involves a particular sort of holiday that is fairly popular and national. During the summer, the big railway stations will be found thronged with the bags and babies of innumerable families going to seaside resorts. Each traveller is (I need hardly say) murmuring to himself the lines of Swinburne:
“I will go down to the great white mother… Mother and maker of men, the sea; I will go down to her, I and none other…”
A friend of mine regards these lines as unreasonable, declaring that Swinburne, however much he liked sea-bathing, should not insist on all the seas of the world being locked up like his private bathroom. But certainly the request, whether reasonable or not, would be very difficult to enforce, say, at Margate or Broadstairs. But even if it be true, as I were loth to believe, that some holiday-makers do not murmur Swinburne’s lines as they start, I am still firmly convinced that most holiday-makers like the sea because it is some kind of outlook upon some kind of loneliness and liberty. It is the only kind of loneliness and liberty. It is the only plain, straight line in Nature. It is the only empty place on earth. It is the one open window; to Jones, as it was to Keats.
I think it was Richard Jefferies who said that all men ought to be idle; and that we should get all the work we wanted done by harnessing to our machinery the tremendous tides of the sea. Something analogous was suggested by Mr. Wells; but I disagree with it. I think it would destroy the holiday. We should have removed all the use of the seaside by removing the uselessness of the sea. Men jaded or dazed with duties wish to look out across that fruitless field, in which God has sown we know not what seed and shall raise we know not what harvest. They wish to behold how enormous is their irresponsibility. The sea blows upon the cashier at Margate the great good news that he is not God. But this holiday sentiment will continue to weaken so long as men try to make all our holidays duties, or all our days holidays; and cannot understand that when anything is being woven the shuttle flies back and forth.
THE PEASANT
THE GENIUS who shall write a real philosophical pantomime (a thing untried, I think, since Aristophanes) should find many handy symbols in the harlequinades of our youth. The donkey who comes in two suggests infinite speculations about organic unity and by divergent evolution. The policeman made into sausages would be excellent machinery either for a Socialistic satire or for a satire on Socialism. And the red-hot poker quite exactly expresses that most terrible and profound thing in human affairs—a fierce domesticity.
But there is another trick of the old pantomimes which happens to offer the only parallel I can think of to the strange state of our society today. We all remember that beginning of the Transformation Scene when the front scene is still there, but the back scene begins to glow through it. The heroine is still in the dungeon; but the walls grow more and more transparent; and something else (probably the Garden of the Fairy Volatile) is apparent at the same time.
PARTE QUARTA: IN PATRIA E ALL’ESTERO
SULLE FESTE
VI SONO epoche della storia che i loro nemici chiamano rozze e che i loro amici chiamano semplici. La mia difficoltà è che non mi paiono semplici, ma sottili. Comprendevano assai meglio di noi l’idea di varietà e di reazione. Per loro l’emancipazione era un rinculo e non un mero rilascio. Il mondo dev’essere capovolto a intervalli assoluti, come si capovolge un secchio per vuotarlo. È essenza di una festa il dover essere una rivoluzione, ed è essenza di una rivoluzione il dover ruotare. Una rivoluzione assai più spaventosa e travolgente di qualunque rivoluzione della storia accade ogni dodici ore. Noi, del tutto seriamente, moriamo ogni giorno. Ci affidiamo a tenebre e dissoluzione assolute; a un sonno tanto nero da aver ucciso molti uomini con una droga o con la neve alla deriva. Ciascuno di noi ha ogni notte un’enorme festa negativa. Ma i più concorderanno, credo, che l’essenza di quella festa è la sua irresponsabilità. Le autorità giudiziarie sarebbero indaffarate se potessimo essere incriminati per i delitti commessi nei sogni. Ora, tutto il senso di una festa era di essere, entro certi razionali freni, irresponsabile. Interferire con una festa era quasi come interferire con un sogno. E l’intero progetto di usare le feste per qualcosa d’altro che feste era davvero assente dalla mente. L’idea di «unire il divertimento all’istruzione» sarebbe parsa come l’idea di unire il sonno all’insonnia. Grandi autorità spirituali ci hanno detto di vegliare e pregare. Grandi influssi spirituali, credo, ci dicono anche di credere e dormire. Ma né dio né sacerdote né diavolo ebbe mai l’impudenza di dirci di vegliare e dormire.
Ed è questa la contraddizione fatta dai moderni fanatici a proposito delle feste. Sarebbe un’opera tipica e trionfale della scienza moderna prendere in carico un bambino giorno e notte; dargli le droghe che lo terrebbero mezzo addormentato tutto il giorno, e i sogni che lo terrebbero mezzo sveglio tutta la notte.
A questo proposito penso che la disposizione scolastica riguardo alle feste sia da tempo un errore ridicolo. I compiti delle vacanze sono un errore. I compiti a casa sono un errore. Date al ragazzo o alla ragazza meno feste se credete che gliene occorrano meno. Ma siate abbastanza pratici da trarre il meglio dal ragazzo o dalla ragazza per qualunque concessione facciate loro. Se potete esonerare qualcuno dal lavoro, potete esonerarlo dall’affanno. L’ozio è un cibo, come il sonno; la libertà è un cibo, come il sonno. L’ozio è questione di qualità più che di quantità. Cinque minuti durano più a lungo quando non si può essere disturbati che cinque ore quando si può essere disturbati. Restringete la libertà quanto al tempo; restringetela quanto allo spazio; ma non restringetela quanto alla qualità. Se date a qualcuno soltanto tre secondi di festa—allora, per tutto ciò che resta del vostro rovinato senso dell’onore, lasciatelo solo per tre secondi.
Prendiamo un esempio che coinvolge un particolare tipo di festa piuttosto popolare e nazionale. Durante l’estate, le grandi stazioni ferroviarie si troveranno gremite delle borse e dei bambini di innumerevoli famiglie dirette alle località balneari. Ogni viaggiatore (quasi non occorre dirlo) mormora a sé stesso i versi di Swinburne:
«Scenderò alla grande madre bianca… Madre e artefice degli uomini, il mare; scenderò a lei, io e nessun altro…»
Un mio amico ritiene questi versi irragionevoli, dichiarando che Swinburne, per quanto amasse i bagni di mare, non dovrebbe pretendere che tutti i mari del mondo siano chiusi a chiave come il suo bagno privato. Ma certo la richiesta, ragionevole o no, sarebbe assai difficile da far valere, poniamo, a Margate o a Broadstairs. Ma anche se fosse vero, come sarei restio a credere, che alcuni villeggianti non mormorano i versi di Swinburne mentre partono, sono tuttavia fermamente convinto che i più amino il mare perché esso è una sorta di affaccio su una sorta di solitudine e di libertà. È l’unica sorta di solitudine e di libertà. È l’unica linea piana, diritta in Natura. È l’unico luogo vuoto sulla terra. È l’unica finestra aperta; per Jones, come lo era per Keats.
Credo fosse Richard Jefferies a dire che tutti gli uomini dovrebbero essere oziosi; e che dovremmo ottenere tutto il lavoro che vogliamo imbrigliando alle nostre macchine le tremende maree del mare. Qualcosa di analogo fu suggerito dal signor Wells; ma io non concordo. Penso che distruggerebbe la festa. Avremmo tolto ogni utilità al mare rimuovendone l’inutilità. Gli uomini spossati o storditi dai doveri desiderano guardare, oltre quel campo infruttuoso, in cui Dio ha seminato non sappiamo quale seme e leverà non sappiamo quale messe. Desiderano contemplare quanto è enorme la loro irresponsabilità. Il mare soffia sul cassiere di Margate la grande buona novella che egli non è Dio. Ma questo sentimento della festa continuerà a indebolirsi finché gli uomini tenteranno di fare di tutte le nostre feste dei doveri, o di tutti i nostri giorni delle feste; e non sapranno comprendere che, quando si tesse qualcosa, la spola vola avanti e indietro.
IL CONTADINO
IL GENIO che scriverà una vera pantomima filosofica (cosa mai tentata, credo, da Aristofane in poi) troverà molti simboli comodi nelle arlecchinate della nostra giovinezza. L’asino che entra in due suggerisce infinite speculazioni sull’unità organica e per evoluzione divergente. Il poliziotto trasformato in salsicce sarebbe un’ottima macchina sia per una satira socialista sia per una satira contro il socialismo. E l’attizzatoio rovente esprime esattamente quella cosa più terribile e profonda nelle faccende umane—una feroce domesticità.
Ma c’è un altro espediente delle vecchie pantomime che offre l’unico parallelo cui io sappia pensare per lo strano stato della nostra società odierna. Tutti ricordiamo quell’inizio della Scena di Trasformazione quando la scena anteriore è ancora là, ma la scena posteriore comincia a risplendervi attraverso. L’eroina è ancora nella prigione; ma le pareti si fanno sempre più trasparenti; e qualcos’altro (probabilmente il Giardino della Fata Volatile) è visibile al medesimo tempo.
I have exactly the same sensations about our old Victorian political methods and the social realities that are now behind them. I do not ignore the old front scene of Privy Council or Parliament; I can still see it there; it is the England of my boyhood, and I rather like it. But simultaneously with these symbolic figures, these representatives and estates of the realm, I can see the Things that are behind. Another England is shining through political England; whether it will be very like the Garden of the Fairy Volatile remains to be seen. This fact, that the Government and the Commonwealth are often on two different planes of reality, has one peculiar result, too little noticed, on our attitude towards foreigners. There are the same names all over Europe—Parliament, Army, Church, Land, and so on. But these words often stand for astonishingly different things; for widely varying degrees of realism or ritual or memory or conspiracy or indifference. When a man has even one concrete experience of some foreign thing, he will generally find it to be in quite another world from that foreign country as it appears in the newspapers. A man reading the best English journals would have the general impression that the chief event in France is the sudden fall of the Ministry which came as abruptly as that tragic blow out of the air which a few weeks before had struck one of its members dead where he stood.
Now I happened to be in France when the news of this tragedy was scattered abroad, and I want to try and convey an atmosphere which I felt, and which I felt to be France itself. To us in England France seemed to be full of all this crisis and disaster. This was something like what one felt upon the actual scene of it.
I was away in those eastern highlands, where France (so to speak) clings to the rising mountains, till they break away and shoot up into the sky as Switzerland. More to the north was that gap that is the great gate into Germany and is guarded by the Lion of Belfort. Among these hills I met a peasant who was like thousands of the peasants all round: a Jack-of-all-trades. Among other things he owned a ramshackle carriage with an excellent horse, with which he could drive me anywhere; and he was, as far as appearance goes, rather like a very rude beggar. His clothes were coarse and threadbare, his face was rugged, but sharp; he was always in a sweat from drudgeries. A man who looked like that would be ‘moved on’ in London if he tried to open the door of a cab. Well, I got him to drive me away over the hills, and, finding that the mountains grew taller, grander, and (one might say) more incredible at every turn of the road, I persuaded him to make a day’s journey of it, and to rest the horse in a high village where (as everywhere in that country) one could get good wine and bread and an omelette at least.
Now, when I stopped before the cottage that could thus become an impromptu inn, I did exactly what every Englishman of my unfortunate class would have done in my place. I addressed the driver with nervous cordiality and extreme vagueness and said that I supposed he would like to have some lunch too, offering him a few francs for the purpose. He did not understand what it meant. He said I had better pay for the carriage at the end. I said it again, and still it was a puzzle to him. I said it again, in French which, however bad, was at least unmistakable; and this time I made myself clear. Whereupon this amazing scarecrow burst into an ungovernable fit of laughter, and slapped his trouser pocket about six times with his squat spread hand, exclaiming, “Money! I have much! I have mountains! I am rich! I am very rich!” And after the conversation I had with him on the road home, I think it perfectly possible that he was considerably richer than I am.
He talked about his dog, which was the best dog in the world; his son, who was the most promising cook in the world; his horse, which was the most astonishing horse in the world; he seemed to find inexhaustible glories in his patch of property. At the end of the journey, warned by that prodigy of the noon, I offered him no extra tip, but only two good cigars that somebody had given me. He at once replied by giving me a bottle of the wine he manufactured himself. It was, he assured me, the best wine in the world.
That is all that happened; only as we drove into the town the papers were flaring with the dreadful death of the French Minister of War and the narrow escape of the French Premier. My friend had never heard of either of them; he took no interest in politics. I think he thought politics a sort of mutiny among slaves. He was a free man. I think my sociological friends really ought to remember that there are many millions of him in Europe.
THE LOST RAILWAY STATION
I AM writing this as best I may in a Scottish railway station; and my thoughts go back, with all the pathos of the patriot, to an English railway station. Trucks and rails may seem to lack the fine shades of variety to be felt in the trees and hills of home; but my fancy really flies to an English railway station where I once dreamed a dream.
There is in the north of London an important station, which is by comparison as quiet and comfortable as the courtyard of an old inn. I do not know why this repose rests upon it, for a considerable train service is connected with it. It has the usual bookstall, at which I have bought all the bloodiest detective stories I could find; various refreshment bars at which I have bought various other things; and all the usual fittings of such a place. But in the centre there stands a fountain, and not far from it a large model of an ocean liner. Something about the look of the fountain and the surrounding hostelries, jutting out on opposite sides, reminds me absurdly of the market-place of a village; though perhaps some thing of a pantomime village. I can imagine the village maiden leaning gracefully on the fountain with a jar or jug or bucket; though I hasten to admit that I have never seen her do so. I can even conceive that the little boy who ran away to sea (that picturesque figure, whose presence, or rather absence, is so essential to the health of the happy village) drank in all his desire of seafaring adventure at the ends of the earth by looking at the toy liner. His white-haired mother would still be waiting for him—presumably in the waiting room. In short, I have always felt that I could fill this place with all the recognized romantic figures of rural life, in fiction if not in fact.
Provo esattamente le stesse sensazioni riguardo ai nostri vecchi metodi politici vittoriani e alle realtà sociali che oggi vi stanno dietro. Non ignoro la vecchia scena di facciata del Consiglio della Corona o del Parlamento; riesco ancora a vederla lì; è l’Inghilterra della mia fanciullezza, e piuttosto mi piace. Ma insieme a queste figure simboliche, questi rappresentanti e ceti del regno, riesco a vedere le Cose che stanno dietro. Un’altra Inghilterra traspare attraverso l’Inghilterra politica; se sarà molto simile al Giardino della Fata Volatile resta da vedere. Questo fatto, che il Governo e lo Stato siano spesso su due piani diversi di realtà, ha un risultato peculiare, troppo poco notato, sul nostro atteggiamento verso gli stranieri. Ci sono gli stessi nomi in tutta Europa: Parlamento, Esercito, Chiesa, Terra, e così via. Ma queste parole stanno spesso per cose sorprendentemente diverse; per gradi assai variabili di realismo o rituale o memoria o cospirazione o indifferenza. Quando un uomo ha anche una sola esperienza concreta di qualche cosa straniera, generalmente la troverà in un mondo del tutto diverso da quel paese straniero quale appare sui giornali. Un uomo che leggesse i migliori giornali inglesi avrebbe l’impressione generale che l’evento principale in Francia sia l’improvvisa caduta del Ministero, giunta bruscamente come quel tragico colpo dall’aria che poche settimane prima aveva ucciso uno dei suoi membri là dove si trovava.
Ora, mi capitò di essere in Francia quando la notizia di questa tragedia fu sparsa ovunque, e voglio provare a rendere un’atmosfera che sentii, e che sentii essere la Francia stessa. A noi in Inghilterra la Francia sembrava piena di tutta questa crisi e questo disastro. Ecco qualcosa di simile a ciò che si provava sulla scena reale dei fatti.
Ero lontano, in quegli altipiani orientali, dove la Francia (per così dire) si aggrappa alle montagne che si levano, finché queste si staccano e si slanciano verso il cielo come Svizzera. Più a nord vi era quel varco che è la grande porta verso la Germania ed è custodito dal Leone di Belfort. Tra queste colline incontrai un contadino che era come migliaia dei contadini tutt’intorno: un factotum. Tra le altre cose possedeva una carrozza sgangherata con un eccellente cavallo, con la quale poteva portarmi ovunque; ed era, quanto all’aspetto, piuttosto simile a un accattone assai rozzo. I suoi abiti erano grezzi e lisi, il suo volto era ruvido, ma acuto; era sempre madido di fatiche. Un uomo dall’aspetto simile verrebbe «fatto circolare» a Londra se tentasse di aprire lo sportello di una vettura. Ebbene, lo convinsi a portarmi via per le colline e, trovando che le montagne si facevano più alte, più grandiose e (si potrebbe dire) più incredibili a ogni svolta della strada, lo persuasi a farne una gita di un’intera giornata, e a far riposare il cavallo in un villaggio d’altura dove (come dappertutto in quel paese) si potevano avere buon vino e pane e almeno una frittata.
Ora, quando mi fermai davanti alla casetta che poteva così diventare una locanda improvvisata, feci esattamente ciò che ogni inglese della mia disgraziata classe avrebbe fatto al mio posto. Mi rivolsi al conducente con nervosa cordialità ed estrema vaghezza e dissi che supponevo gli sarebbe piaciuto pranzare anche lui, offrendogli allo scopo qualche franco. Non capì che cosa significasse. Disse che avrei fatto meglio a pagare la carrozza alla fine. Lo ripetei, e ancora per lui era un enigma. Lo ripetei di nuovo, in un francese che, per quanto pessimo, era almeno inequivocabile; e questa volta mi feci capire. Al che questo stupefacente spaventapasseri scoppiò in un accesso incontenibile di risa, e si batté la tasca dei pantaloni una mezza dozzina di volte con la sua mano tozza e aperta, esclamando: «Denaro! Ne ho tanto! Ho montagne! Sono ricco! Sono ricchissimo!» E dopo la conversazione che ebbi con lui sulla via del ritorno, ritengo perfettamente possibile che egli fosse considerevolmente più ricco di me.
Parlava del suo cane, che era il miglior cane del mondo; di suo figlio, che era il cuoco più promettente del mondo; del suo cavallo, che era il cavallo più sbalorditivo del mondo; sembrava trovare glorie inesauribili nel suo pezzetto di proprietà. Alla fine del viaggio, ammaestrato da quel prodigio del mezzogiorno, non gli offrii alcuna mancia extra, ma soltanto due buoni sigari che qualcuno mi aveva dato. Egli replicò subito regalandomi una bottiglia del vino che produceva lui stesso. Era, mi assicurò, il miglior vino del mondo.
Questo è tutto ciò che accadde; solo che, mentre entravamo in città, i giornali fiammeggiavano con la spaventosa morte del Ministro della Guerra francese e lo scampato pericolo del Primo Ministro francese. Il mio amico non aveva mai sentito parlare né dell’uno né dell’altro; non nutriva alcun interesse per la politica. Credo che considerasse la politica una specie di ammutinamento fra schiavi. Era un uomo libero. Penso che i miei amici sociologi dovrebbero davvero ricordare che di lui ce ne sono molti milioni in Europa.
LA STAZIONE FERROVIARIA PERDUTA
Sto scrivendo questo come meglio posso in una stazione ferroviaria scozzese; e il mio pensiero torna indietro, con tutto il pathos del patriota, a una stazione ferroviaria inglese. Vagoni e rotaie possono sembrar privi delle fini sfumature di varietà che si colgono negli alberi e nelle colline di casa; ma la mia fantasia vola davvero a una stazione ferroviaria inglese dove una volta feci un sogno.
C’è nel nord di Londra una stazione importante, che è, a paragone, tanto quieta e comoda quanto il cortile di una vecchia locanda. Non so perché questa quiete vi si posi sopra, giacché vi è collegato un notevole servizio di treni. Ha la solita edicola, dove ho comprato tutti i più sanguinosi romanzi polizieschi che riuscissi a trovare; vari banchi di ristoro dove ho comprato varie altre cose; e tutte le solite attrezzature di un luogo simile. Ma al centro sorge una fontana, e non lontano da essa un grande modello di un transatlantico. Qualcosa nell’aspetto della fontana e delle locande circostanti, che sporgono da lati opposti, mi ricorda assurdamente la piazza del mercato di un villaggio; benché forse qualcosa di un villaggio da pantomima. Posso immaginare la fanciulla del villaggio appoggiata con grazia alla fontana con una brocca o un boccale o un secchio; benché mi affretti ad ammettere di non averla mai vista farlo. Posso persino concepire che il ragazzino che scappò per andare in mare (quella figura pittoresca, la cui presenza, o meglio assenza, è tanto essenziale alla salute del villaggio felice) bevesse tutto il suo desiderio di avventure marinare ai confini della terra guardando il transatlantico giocattolo. La sua madre dai capelli bianchi lo starebbe ancora aspettando, presumibilmente nella sala d’attesa. In breve, ho sempre sentito di poter riempire questo luogo con tutte le riconosciute figure romantiche della vita rurale, se non nella realtà almeno nella finzione.
I wonder what would really happen if in some special convulsion that station were really cut off and left to live its own simple life, like a farm surrounded by floods, or a hamlet snowed up in the mountains. It pleases me to fancy that a railway strike might go on so long that people forgot the very purpose of a railway station. Railway porters would not even know that they were railway porters; and even the stationmaster would be ignorant of the mysterious secret of his mastery. Most of us have had a fancy that all society is like that strange railway station; that its social actions have some hieratic significance lost before the beginning of history; that it was made it knows not why; and is waiting for it knows not what. For the end of such a play or parable would be some thing truly terrific, like the Day of Judgment. When the signals changed colours at last, it would truly be like the moon turning to blood in the Apocalypse. Something utterly unthinkable, like the thunder and the seals and trumpets of the Last Day, would transform my quiet railway-station. A train would come in at last.
But my fancy chiefly rests on the remote generations of the future in this simple community, descended from the original primitive marriages between a few railway porters and a few barmaids. By that time the little commonwealth ought to have a whole tangle of traditions ultimately to be traced back to the lost idea of a train. Perhaps people would still go religiously to the ticket-office at intervals, as to a kind of confessional box; and there recite the names of far-off and by this time fabulous places; the word ‘Harrow’ sounding like the word ‘Heaven’ or the word ‘Ealing’ like the word ‘Eden’. For this society would of course, like every other, produce sceptics; that is men who had lost their social memory. All sorts of quaint ceremonials would survive, and would be scoffed at as irrational, because their rational origin had been obscured. At a date centuries hence, the clock in the refreshment room would still be kept a little fast, as compared with the clock in the station. There would be most complicated controversies about this custom; turning on things behind the times and things in advance of the age. The bookstall would have come to be something like the Bodleian or the great lost library of Alexandria; a storehouse of ancestral documents of primitive antiquity and profound obscurity; and learned men would be found spelling their way through a paragraph in one of our daily papers, deluded with the ever-vanishing hope of finding a sort of human meaning in it. The fountain seems to be the only possible religious centre of the village; though I think the mysterious image of the great ship should be the type of some faint adventurous memory and adventurous hope; a vague hint of things beyond; perhaps a great legend like that of the Argo. But a fountain is clearly the more human and historic site for a shrine. It would be dedicated, I hope, to a saint; as are so many springs and wells all over Christendom. And now I come to think of it, the very name of this railway station, like so much also that sounds cockney and commonplace, has an origin presumably religious. There could hardly be a more beautiful combination of words and ideas than that which I imagine to lie behind the prosaic name of Marylebone.
I had intended to draw a moral, or many morals from this vision. I had intended to point out how much our own society suffers from a similar paradox; not that its institutions are meaningless; but on the contrary, that they have a meaning, which would be found again if the society woke up and went to work again. It is only because they are asleep that they seem to be senseless. If the trains were running, if the traditions were working, the traditions would be instantly recognized as reasonable. Thus the modern world does not really suffer from scurry, but rather from slumber. I had in mind especially what I may call the Allegory of the Lost Luggage, or of the Cloak Room, which is concerned with the philosophy of property. Property is still being defended by a dim sense of duty; though it is really held up in transit and accumulated in the wrong place. But I cannot pursue my guess; for something has happened in the Scotch railway station which dissipates all my dreams of the happier English railway station. My train has come in.
BETHLEHEM AND THE GREAT CITIES
I WAS once at the same dinner-table with a newspaper proprietor who regarded himself, and was regarded, as the dictator of Europe and who really was by far too great an extent the dictator of England. He also was interested in Palestine, and in the course of conversation I learned that he had never even heard of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. I suppose he had seen Crusaders in pictures or at fancy-dress balls; but he had no notion of what they did, and certainly no notion that what they did was to conquer and make Palestine a part of Europe for a hundred years, filling it with abbeys like those of Glastonbury or St. Andrew’s and castles like those of Conway and Caernarvon. Now that is a point that interests me a great deal because the traces of it are very obvious to any traveller who happens to have been there. The first fact that strikes him about Jerusalem is that it is a medieval town; long before it strikes him specially as an oriental town. It has that curious combination of cosiness and defiance that belongs to the walled cities and painted pales and fences of the life of the Middle Ages. The latest walls were built by the successors of the Saracens but they are not in our sense Saracenic. Most of the windows and gates are in their whole spirit Gothic. The Franciscan going by with his beard and brown habit under those grey Gothic walls seems to be entirely in the picture, and even in the conventional picture. It is rather the Arab coming in with his coloured turban or burnous who seems for the moment, if only by a sort of optical illusion, to be a stranger and one straying from a far-off eastern land.
Mi domando cosa accadrebbe davvero se, per qualche speciale sconvolgimento, quella stazione venisse veramente tagliata fuori e lasciata a vivere la propria semplice vita, come una fattoria circondata dalle acque, o un borgo sepolto dalla neve fra i monti. Mi diletta immaginare che uno sciopero ferroviario possa protrarsi tanto a lungo da far dimenticare alla gente lo scopo stesso di una stazione ferroviaria. I facchini non saprebbero nemmeno di essere facchini; e persino il capostazione ignorerebbe il misterioso segreto della sua signoria. Molti di noi hanno avuto la fantasia che tutta la società sia come quella strana stazione ferroviaria; che le sue azioni sociali abbiano qualche significato ieratico perduto prima dell’inizio della storia; che sia stata fatta senza sapere perché; e sia in attesa senza sapere di che cosa. Poiché la fine di un tale dramma o parabola sarebbe qualcosa di veramente terrificante, come il Giorno del Giudizio. Quando i segnali cambiassero colore, alla fine, sarebbe davvero come la luna che si muta in sangue nell’Apocalisse. Qualcosa di assolutamente impensabile, come i tuoni e i sigilli e le trombe dell’Ultimo Giorno, trasformerebbe la mia quieta stazione ferroviaria. Un treno arriverebbe, alla fine.
Ma la mia fantasia si posa soprattutto sulle remote generazioni del futuro in questa semplice comunità, discese dai primitivi matrimoni originari fra alcuni facchini e alcune cameriere di taverna. A quel tempo il piccolo commonwealth dovrebbe avere ormai un intero groviglio di tradizioni riconducibili in ultima analisi all’idea perduta di un treno. Forse la gente andrebbe ancora devotamente alla biglietteria di tanto in tanto, come a una sorta di confessionale; e là reciterebbe i nomi di luoghi lontani e ormai favolosi; la parola «Harrow» suonerebbe come la parola «Cielo», o la parola «Ealing» come la parola «Eden». Poiché questa società, come ogni altra, ovviamente produrrebbe scettici; ossia uomini che avessero perduto la loro memoria sociale. Ogni sorta di bizzarro cerimoniale sopravvivrebbe, e sarebbe schernito come irrazionale, perché la sua origine razionale era stata offuscata. In un’epoca lontana secoli, l’orologio del ristoro sarebbe ancora tenuto un poco avanti, rispetto all’orologio della stazione. Vi sarebbero controversie complicatissime intorno a questa usanza; imperniate sulle cose in ritardo sui tempi e sulle cose in anticipo sull’epoca. L’edicola dei libri sarebbe divenuta qualcosa come la Bodleiana o la grande biblioteca perduta di Alessandria; un deposito di documenti ancestrali di primitiva antichità e profonda oscurità; e si troverebbero uomini dotti a decifrare a fatica un paragrafo di uno dei nostri quotidiani, illusi dalla sempre svanente speranza di trovarvi una sorta di senso umano. La fontana sembra essere l’unico possibile centro religioso del villaggio; sebbene io pensi che la misteriosa immagine della grande nave debba essere il tipo di qualche fioca memoria avventurosa e avventurosa speranza; un vago accenno di cose oltre; forse una grande leggenda come quella dell’Argo. Ma una fontana è chiaramente il sito più umano e storico per un santuario. Sarebbe dedicata, spero, a un santo; come lo sono tante sorgenti e tanti pozzi in tutta la Cristianità. E ora che ci penso, il nome stesso di questa stazione ferroviaria, come tanto altro che suona cockney e triviale, ha un’origine presumibilmente religiosa. Difficilmente potrebbe esservi combinazione più bella di parole e idee di quella che io immagino celarsi dietro il prosaico nome di Marylebone.
Avevo inteso trarre una morale, o molte morali, da questa visione. Avevo inteso mostrare quanto la nostra stessa società soffra di un simile paradosso; non che le sue istituzioni siano prive di significato; ma al contrario, che esse hanno un significato, che si ritroverebbe se la società si risvegliasse e tornasse al lavoro. È solo perché sono addormentate che sembrano insensate. Se i treni corressero, se le tradizioni funzionassero, le tradizioni sarebbero istantaneamente riconosciute come ragionevoli. Così il mondo moderno non soffre in realtà di trambusto, ma piuttosto di torpore. Avevo in mente specialmente quella che posso chiamare l’Allegoria del Bagaglio Smarrito, ovvero del Deposito, che riguarda la filosofia della proprietà. La proprietà è ancora difesa da un vago senso del dovere; sebbene sia in realtà trattenuta in transito e accumulata nel luogo sbagliato. Ma non posso proseguire la mia congettura; perché qualcosa è accaduto nella stazione ferroviaria scozzese che dissipa tutti i miei sogni della più felice stazione ferroviaria inglese. Il mio treno è arrivato.
BETLEMME E LE GRANDI CITTÀ
FUI una volta alla stessa tavola con un proprietario di giornali che si considerava, ed era considerato, il dittatore d’Europa e che in realtà era, in misura fin troppo grande, il dittatore d’Inghilterra. Egli s’interessava anche alla Palestina, e nel corso della conversazione appresi che non aveva mai nemmeno sentito parlare del regno latino di Gerusalemme. Suppongo che avesse visto Crociati nei quadri o ai balli in costume; ma non aveva idea di ciò che essi fecero, e certo nessuna idea che ciò che fecero fu conquistare e rendere la Palestina una parte d’Europa per cent’anni, riempiendola di abbazie come quelle di Glastonbury o di Sant’Andrea e di castelli come quelli di Conway e Caernarvon. Ora, questo è un punto che m’interessa moltissimo, perché le tracce di esso sono assai evidenti a ogni viaggiatore cui capiti di esservi stato. Il primo fatto che lo colpisce a proposito di Gerusalemme è che essa è una città medievale; assai prima di colpirlo in modo particolare come città orientale. Ha quella curiosa combinazione di intimità e di sfida che appartiene alle città cinte di mura e alle palizzate e agli steccati dipinti della vita del Medioevo. Le mura più recenti furono costruite dai successori dei Saraceni, ma non sono, nel nostro senso, saracene. La maggior parte delle finestre e delle porte è, in tutto il suo spirito, gotica. Il francescano che passa con la barba e il saio bruno sotto quelle grigie mura gotiche sembra star del tutto nel quadro, e persino nel quadro convenzionale. È piuttosto l’arabo che entra col suo turbante colorato o col burnus che sembra per un momento, non fosse che per una sorta di illusione ottica, essere un estraneo, uno che si è smarrito da una lontana terra orientale.
I had a rather parallel experience when I first saw Rome. In the case of Rome, as in the case of Jerusalem, people seem to have lost their own first impressions in the disproportionate emphasis of detail among guides and guide-books. The general impression of Rome is not the Forum or even the Coliseum. We might almost say that they are to St. Peter’s what Stonehenge is to Salisbury Cathedral. The overwhelming impression is not that of Pagan but of Papal Rome; but especially Rome of the Renaissance Popes. I say it is the overwhelming impression; it could not be to every body a pleasing impression. It might annoy a man, not only if he were narrowly Puritan, but also if he were too narrowly medieval. It did annoy Ruskin and might well have annoyed William Morris. Nor is their criticism a thing merely to be criticized; there is in that classical exuberance much that is really florid and false. But that is the impression; and it is quite certainly the stamp and imprint of the great Popes of the Renaissance. Renaissance Rome is not merely heathen, any more than Jerusalem is merely Jewish or merely Moslem. In those huge fountains where the Tritons look like Titans in the twilight, they have none the less been really baptized by these waters. The cross on top of the primeval obelisks is not a contradiction but a culmination. The culmination culminates on that high column where Our Lady stands at once vanquishing and exalting the symbol of Diana, with her foot upon the horns of the moon.
I have mentioned these two cases for the sake of a truth which any real traveller will have found out for himself. Our recent and rather provincial tradition greatly exaggerated the proportion of such places that is pagan or barbaric or even merely primeval. There is much more than we were taught to suppose of the traces of civilization, and even of our own civilization. But as my memory returns to Palestine by this rambling path, I remember what may really be called, in a deeper and more subtle sense, an exception. Palestine itself was filled, so to speak, with Norman castles and Catholic shrines; and in so far as Jerusalem does often suggest the Moslem, it is chiefly because the Moslem does suggest the Crusaders. But there was one experience in Palestinian travel that really is something more than merely historical; something that is too human to be historical. It is certainly not pagan but it is in a sense primeval. It is the one thing that really does seem to be connected with Christianity and not with Christendom. I have called it primeval, because there is in this greatest of all origins an atmosphere truly to be called original. This one vision really does not primarily suggest pilgrimages and shrines and medieval spires or medieval spears. It does rather suggest ancestral dawns and mystical abysses and the end of chaos and the creation of light. I mean the experience of Bethlehem.
The heart of Bethlehem is a cavern; the sunken shrine which is the traditional scene of the Nativity. Nine times out of ten these traditions are true, and this is wholly ratified by the truth about the countryside; for it is into such subterranean stables that the people have driven their cattle, and they are by far the likeliest places of refuge for such a homeless group. It is curious to consider what numberless and varied versions of the Bethlehem story have been turned into pictures. No man who understands Christianity will complain that they are all different from each other and all different from the truth, or rather the fact. It is the whole point of the story that it happened in one particular human place that might have been any particular human place; a sunny colonnade in Italy or a snow-laden cottage in Sussex. It is yet more curious that some modern artists have prided themselves on merely topographical truth; and yet have not made much of this truth about the dark and sacred place underground. It seems strange that they have hardly emphasized the one case in which realism really touches reality. There is something beyond expression moving to the imagination in the idea of the holy fugitives being brought lower than the very land; as if the earth had swallowed them; the glory of God like gold buried in the ground. Perhaps the image is too deep for art, even in the sense of dealing in another dimension. For it might be difficult for any art to convey simultaneously the divine secret of the cavern and the cavalcade of the mysterious kings, trampling the rocky plain and shaking the cavern roof. Yet the medieval pictures would often represent parallel scenes on the same canvas; and the medieval popular theatre, which the guildsmen wheeled about the streets, was sometimes a structure of three floors, with one scene above another. A parallel can be found in those tremendous lines of Francis Thompson:
East, ah, east of Himalay Dwell the nations underground, Hiding from the shock of Day; From the sun’s uprising sound.
But no poetry even of the greatest poets will ever express all that is hidden in that image of the light of the world like a subterranean sun; only these prosaic notes remain to suggest what one individual felt about Bethlehem.
THE SACREDNESS OF SITES
IT IS impossible to make a list of the things that humanitarians do not know about humanity. On thousands of things the men who talk most of the common bond are ignorant of what is really common. Among a thousand of such things may be mentioned the instinct about the sacredness of sites. If there is one thing that men have proved again and again it is that even when they furiously burn down a temple, they like to put another on top of it. They do not, generally speaking, want to worship St. George except on the very spot where they once worshipped the Dragon. And even when they have altered the universe they do not alter the situation. What is the reason for this, and whether it is some hitherto nameless need of human nature, or whether there be indeed something behind those ancient legends of the genius loci, or spirit of the place, need not now be discussed. But it is certain that throughout all history there has been a rhythm of expansion and contraction from certain centres; and that, unless we would be as superficial as the shallowest journalists, we can see under all changes that these centres remain. It is commonplace that empires pass away, because empires were never very important. Empires are frivolous things, the fringes of a sprawling culture that has sprawled too far. Cities do not pass away, or very seldom pass away, because the city is the cell of our organic formation; and even those living in the vast void of empire can find no phrase for social duty, save to tell men to be good citizens.
Ebbi un’esperienza abbastanza parallela quando vidi Roma per la prima volta. Nel caso di Roma, come in quello di Gerusalemme, la gente sembra aver smarrito le proprie prime impressioni nell’enfasi sproporzionata sui dettagli di guide e di libri-guida. L’impressione generale di Roma non è il Foro e nemmeno il Colosseo. Potremmo quasi dire che essi stanno a San Pietro come Stonehenge sta alla cattedrale di Salisbury. L’impressione travolgente non è quella della Roma pagana, ma di quella papale; e specialmente della Roma dei papi del Rinascimento. Dico che è l’impressione travolgente; non potrebbe essere per tutti un’impressione gradevole. Potrebbe infastidire un uomo, non solo se fosse gretto puritano, ma anche se fosse troppo grettamente medievale. Infastidì davvero Ruskin e ben avrebbe potuto infastidire William Morris. Né la loro critica è cosa da criticare soltanto; vi è in quell’esuberanza classica molto che è davvero florido e falso. Ma quella è l’impressione; ed è quasi con certezza l’impronta e il sigillo dei grandi papi del Rinascimento. La Roma del Rinascimento non è meramente pagana, non più di quanto Gerusalemme sia meramente ebraica o meramente musulmana. In quelle enormi fontane dove i Tritoni sembrano Titani nel crepuscolo, essi sono nondimeno stati davvero battezzati da queste acque. La croce in cima ai primordiali obelischi non è una contraddizione ma un culmine. Il culmine culmina su quell’alta colonna dove la Madonna sta al tempo stesso vincendo ed esaltando il simbolo di Diana, col piede sulle corna della luna.
Ho menzionato questi due casi in nome di una verità che ogni vero viaggiatore avrà scoperto da sé. La nostra recente e piuttosto provinciale tradizione esagerava grandemente la proporzione di tali luoghi che è pagana o barbarica o persino meramente primordiale. Vi sono, delle tracce di civiltà, e persino della nostra civiltà, molte più di quante ci fu insegnato a supporre. Ma mentre la mia memoria torna alla Palestina per questo sentiero tortuoso, ricordo ciò che può davvero dirsi, in un senso più profondo e più sottile, un’eccezione. La Palestina stessa era colma, per così dire, di castelli normanni e di santuari cattolici; e nella misura in cui Gerusalemme spesso evoca il musulmano, ciò è soprattutto perché il musulmano evoca i crociati. Ma vi fu un’esperienza nel viaggio in Palestina che è davvero qualcosa di più che meramente storico; qualcosa che è troppo umano per essere storico. Non è certamente pagano, ma è in un certo senso primordiale. È l’unica cosa che davvero sembra connessa con il Cristianesimo e non con la Cristianità. L’ho chiamato primordiale, perché vi è in questa più grande di tutte le origini un’atmosfera che merita davvero il nome di originaria. Questa visione, in verità, non evoca in primo luogo pellegrinaggi e santuari e guglie medievali o lance medievali. Evoca piuttosto albe ancestrali e abissi mistici e la fine del caos e la creazione della luce. Intendo l’esperienza di Betlemme.
Il cuore di Betlemme è una caverna; il santuario sotterraneo che è la scena tradizionale della Natività. Nove volte su dieci queste tradizioni sono vere, e questa è pienamente ratificata dalla verità sulla campagna; poiché è proprio in tali stalle sotterranee che la gente ha spinto il bestiame, ed esse sono di gran lunga i più probabili luoghi di rifugio per un gruppo così privo di casa. È curioso considerare quante innumerevoli e svariate versioni della storia di Betlemme siano state tramutate in dipinti. Nessun uomo che comprenda il Cristianesimo si lamenterà che siano tutte diverse l’una dall’altra e tutte diverse dalla verità, o piuttosto dal fatto. È l’intero senso della storia che essa sia accaduta in un particolare luogo umano che avrebbe potuto essere qualsiasi particolare luogo umano; un colonnato soleggiato in Italia o un cottage carico di neve nel Sussex. È ancora più curioso che alcuni artisti moderni si siano vantati di una verità meramente topografica; e tuttavia non abbiano dato gran rilievo a questa verità sul luogo oscuro e sacro sottoterra. Sembra strano che abbiano appena messo in risalto l’unico caso in cui il realismo tocca davvero la realtà. Vi è qualcosa di indicibilmente commovente per l’immaginazione nell’idea dei santi fuggiaschi condotti più in basso della terra stessa; come se la terra li avesse inghiottiti; la gloria di Dio come oro sepolto nel suolo. Forse l’immagine è troppo profonda per l’arte, anche nel senso di operare in un’altra dimensione. Poiché potrebbe essere difficile per qualsiasi arte trasmettere simultaneamente il segreto divino della caverna e la cavalcata dei misteriosi re, che calpestano la pianura rocciosa e fanno tremare la volta della caverna. Eppure i dipinti medievali spesso rappresentavano scene parallele sulla stessa tela; e il teatro popolare medievale, che gli uomini delle corporazioni trascinavano su ruote per le strade, era talvolta una struttura di tre piani, con una scena sopra l’altra. Un parallelo si può trovare in quei tremendi versi di Francis Thompson:
A oriente, ah, a oriente dell’Himalaya dimorano le nazioni sottoterra, celandosi dall’urto del Giorno; dal suono del sole che sorge.
Ma nessuna poesia, nemmeno dei più grandi poeti, esprimerà mai tutto ciò che è celato in quell’immagine della luce del mondo come un sole sotterraneo; solo queste prosaiche note rimangono a suggerire ciò che un individuo ha provato dinanzi a Betlemme.
LA SACRALITÀ DEI LUOGHI
È impossibile fare una lista delle cose che gli umanitari non sanno dell’umanità. Su migliaia di cose gli uomini che più parlano del vincolo comune ignorano ciò che è davvero comune. Tra un migliaio di tali cose si può menzionare l’istinto circa la sacralità dei luoghi. Se c’è una cosa che gli uomini hanno dimostrato più e più volte è che, anche quando incendiano furiosamente un tempio, amano erigerne un altro al suo posto. In generale non vogliono venerare san Giorgio se non nel punto stesso in cui un tempo veneravano il Drago. E anche quando hanno mutato l’universo non ne mutano la collocazione. Quale sia la ragione di ciò, e se si tratti di qualche finora innominato bisogno della natura umana, o se vi sia davvero qualcosa dietro quelle antiche leggende del genius loci, o spirito del luogo, non occorre ora discuterlo. Ma è certo che lungo tutta la storia vi è stato un ritmo di espansione e contrazione a partire da certi centri; e che, a meno di voler essere superficiali quanto i più superficiali giornalisti, possiamo vedere sotto ogni mutamento che questi centri permangono. È luogo comune che gli imperi svaniscano, perché gli imperi non furono mai molto importanti. Gli imperi sono cose frivole, le frange di una cultura dilagante che ha dilagato troppo lontano. Le città non svaniscono, o assai di rado svaniscono, perché la città è la cellula della nostra formazione organica; e persino coloro che vivono nel vasto vuoto dell’impero non trovano frase per il dovere sociale, se non quella di dire agli uomini di essere buoni cittadini.
Empires pass away almost as if to accentuate the fact that cities do not pass away. At least five empires have successively claimed suzerainty over little Jerusalem upon the hill; and they are all now mere names—Egypt and Babylon and Persia and Macedonia and Rome; and for those unaffected by names these are unimportant. But Jerusalem is not unimportant; it is, at this very moment when I write, the scene of surging and threatening conflict. There was a Byzantine Empire and there is still a Turkish Empire, and one may soon be as dead as the other; but it will always matter who holds San Sophia and the town of Constantine upon the Golden Horn. Paris is older than France and York is older than England; and Cologne is immeasurably older than Germany. These centres of civilization have something in them more magnetic and immortal even than nationality, let alone mere vulgar imperialism. Ghosts haunt houses, they say, and the ghosts of whole people haunt whole cities, till half Europe is like a haunted house. It is only dull materialists who can wander away into any material environment. The spirit and all that is spiritual returns to its own environment. The world ebbs back again to its cities, to its centres; it is true, as I have said, of many cities; it is most true of the most central city of Rome.
Everything was done to take away the Roman character from Rome. The Emperor was taken away, but the Pope remained. The Pope was taken away, but the Pope returned. The former could not make a new Rome at Byzantium. The latter could not make a new Rome at Avignon. The former experiment had behind it the great civilization of the Greeks, the latter had behind it the great civilization of the French. The Greek Emperors thought they could move it easily to the East and the French Kings that they could move it easily to the West. But Rome, especially Christian Rome, is a rock not easily to be moved; and in the course of but a few centuries, as history goes, she had seen the French Monarchy go down before the Jacobins as she had seen the Greek Empire go down before the Moslems.
I am now about to utter a sentence of familiar and horrid cant, which I fear may be respectfully received. It is said everywhere, in a sense that is quite false; and yet, strangely enough, it is quite true. I am going to say that the world is not yet ready for enforced international peace and disarmament in Europe. In all the welter of wordy hypocrisy that makes so much of modern culture and moral science, I know nothing so contemptible, as a rule, as that evolutionary excuse about the world not being ripe. It is said by Socialists who do not want to leave off being Capitalists. It is said by war-profiteers who would like one more war to make them millionaires, and then eternal peace; or by high-minded gluttons and epicures who would like their grandchildren to be vegetarians. So the employer may go on sweating because the world is not ready for Communism; or the huckster may go on swindling because the social evolution of man has not yet reached the point of common honesty; or the politician may bribe and be bribed at leisure, because the social prophets have calculated an exact and distant date for Utopia. But they can all sweat and swindle, and bribe hopefully, happily, with radiant faces, because Utopia is sure to come some time— and for somebody else. Ninety times out of a hundred this moral distinction is false and cowardly; but in this special case, for one special reason, it does really apply. I doubt very much whether there will ever be a time when there will be no war. I cannot imagine how there can be a time in which there can be no war. But I do believe that, if the life of Europe evolves in one particular way, there may yet be something very like real European unity; an international understanding that would really prevent many international misunderstandings. But of that development it really is true to say that it has not happened yet, and that, until it has happened, we must not act as if it had.
Human unity is a huge and overwhelming truth, in the face of which all differences of continent or country are flattened out. European unity is an ancient fundamental and sometimes invisible truth, which every white man will discover if he meets another white man in Central Africa or unpenetrated Tibet. But national unity is a truth; and a truth which cannot, must not, and will not be denied, but chiefly for these very reasons— that nationality is human and that nationality is European. The man who forgets nationality instantly becomes less human and less European. He seems somehow to have turned into a walking abstraction, a resolution of some committee, a programme of some political movement, and to be by some unmistakable transformation, striking chill like the touch of a fish, less of a living man. The European man is a man through his patriotism and the particular civilization of his people. The cosmopolitan is not a European, still less a good European. He is a traveller in Europe, as if he were a tourist from the moon. In other words, what has happened is this; that for good or evil, European history has produced European nations by a European process; they are the organs of the organic life of our race, at least in recent times; and unless we receive our natural European inheritance through those natural organs, we do not really receive it at all. We receive something else; a priggish and provincial abstraction, invented by a few modern and more or less ignorant men. So long as those organs are the only organs of a living tradition, we must live by them; and it is true to say that the time has not yet come for all the nations living by a tradition that they can all hold and inherit together. It means finding something that good men love even more than they love their country. And modern Europe has not got it yet.
I will not argue here about how Europe is to get it; but I would suggest that it might possibly begin by returning to the civic origins. I mean that the countries may not expand to the continents, but rather return to the cities. Humanity may find in the cities what might yet become a universal citizenship, as it did with the cities of antiquity. But it could only happen with the cities that are really antique. It would mean the sort of cities which we only call ancient because they are still alive. But it would repose on the real and profoundly human sentiment about sites, for sites are generally shrines.
Gli imperi svaniscono quasi a voler sottolineare il fatto che le città non svaniscono. Almeno cinque imperi hanno rivendicato in successione la sovranità sulla piccola Gerusalemme in cima al colle; e ora sono tutti meri nomi: Egitto e Babilonia e Persia e Macedonia e Roma; e per chi non si lascia impressionare dai nomi essi sono cose di poco conto. Ma Gerusalemme non è cosa di poco conto; essa è, proprio in questo istante in cui scrivo, teatro di un conflitto ribollente e minaccioso. Vi fu un Impero bizantino e vi è ancora un Impero turco, e l’uno potrebbe presto essere morto quanto l’altro; ma conterà sempre chi tenga Santa Sofia e la città di Costantino sul Corno d’Oro. Parigi è più antica della Francia e York è più antica dell’Inghilterra; e Colonia è incommensurabilmente più antica della Germania. Questi centri di civiltà hanno in sé qualcosa di più magnetico e immortale persino della nazionalità, per non parlare del volgare imperialismo. I fantasmi infestano le case, si dice, e i fantasmi di interi popoli infestano intere città, finché mezza Europa è come una casa infestata. Sono soltanto gli ottusi materialisti a poter vagare lontano in un qualsiasi ambiente materiale. Lo spirito e tutto ciò che è spirituale ritorna al proprio ambiente. Il mondo rifluisce di nuovo verso le sue città, verso i suoi centri; ciò è vero, come ho detto, di molte città; è verissimo della più centrale delle città, di Roma.
Tutto fu fatto per togliere a Roma il carattere romano. L’Imperatore fu portato via, ma il Papa rimase. Il Papa fu portato via, ma il Papa tornò. Il primo non poté fare una nuova Roma a Bisanzio. Il secondo non poté fare una nuova Roma ad Avignone. Il primo esperimento aveva alle spalle la grande civiltà dei Greci, il secondo aveva alle spalle la grande civiltà dei Francesi. Gli Imperatori greci pensavano di poterla spostare facilmente a Oriente e i Re francesi di poterla spostare facilmente a Occidente. Ma Roma, specialmente la Roma cristiana, è una roccia non facile da smuovere; e nel corso di pochi secoli soltanto, per quanto conta la storia, essa vide la Monarchia francese cadere davanti ai Giacobini così come aveva visto l’Impero greco cadere davanti ai Musulmani.
Sto per pronunciare una frase di consueta e orrenda ipocrisia, che temo possa essere accolta con rispetto. La si dice dappertutto, in un senso del tutto falso; eppure, per quanto strano, essa è del tutto vera. Sto per dire che il mondo non è ancora pronto per una pace internazionale e un disarmo imposti in Europa. In tutto quel guazzabuglio di verbosa ipocrisia che tanto compone la cultura e la scienza morale moderne, non conosco nulla di più spregevole, di regola, di quella scusa evoluzionistica sul mondo che non è ancora maturo. La dicono i Socialisti che non vogliono smettere di essere Capitalisti. La dicono i profittatori di guerra che vorrebbero un’altra guerra ancora per farsi milionari, e poi la pace eterna; oppure i nobilissimi ghiottoni ed epicurei che vorrebbero che i loro nipoti fossero vegetariani. Così il datore di lavoro può continuare a sfruttare perché il mondo non è pronto per il Comunismo; o il rivenditore può continuare a truffare perché l’evoluzione sociale dell’uomo non ha ancora raggiunto il punto della comune onestà; o il politico può corrompere ed essere corrotto con comodo, perché i profeti sociali hanno calcolato una data esatta e lontana per l’Utopia. Ma possono tutti sfruttare e truffare, e corrompere fiduciosi, felici, con volti raggianti, perché l’Utopia di sicuro verrà, prima o poi… e per qualcun altro. Novanta volte su cento questa distinzione morale è falsa e vile; ma in questo caso particolare, per una particolare ragione, essa vale davvero. Dubito assai che vi sarà mai un tempo in cui non vi sarà guerra. Non riesco a immaginare come possa esservi un tempo in cui non possa esservi guerra. Ma credo davvero che, se la vita d’Europa evolve in un modo particolare, potrà pur esservi qualcosa di molto simile a una vera unità europea; un’intesa internazionale che davvero eviterebbe molti fraintendimenti internazionali. Ma di quello sviluppo è davvero vero dire che non è ancora avvenuto, e che, finché non è avvenuto, non dobbiamo agire come se lo fosse.
L’unità umana è una verità immensa e travolgente, di fronte alla quale ogni differenza di continente o di paese si appiattisce. L’unità europea è una verità antica, fondamentale e a volte invisibile, che ogni uomo bianco scoprirà se incontra un altro uomo bianco nell’Africa Centrale o nel Tibet inesplorato. Ma l’unità nazionale è una verità; e una verità che non può, non deve e non sarà negata, ma soprattutto proprio per queste stesse ragioni: che la nazionalità è umana e che la nazionalità è europea. L’uomo che dimentica la nazionalità diventa all’istante meno umano e meno europeo. Sembra in qualche modo essersi trasformato in un’astrazione ambulante, in una risoluzione di un qualche comitato, in un programma di un qualche movimento politico, e per una qualche inconfondibile trasformazione, gelido al tatto come il contatto con un pesce, essere meno un uomo vivente. L’uomo europeo è un uomo attraverso il suo patriottismo e la particolare civiltà del suo popolo. Il cosmopolita non è un europeo, e ancor meno un buon europeo. È un viaggiatore in Europa, come se fosse un turista venuto dalla luna. In altre parole, ciò che è accaduto è questo: che nel bene o nel male, la storia europea ha prodotto le nazioni europee per mezzo di un processo europeo; esse sono gli organi della vita organica della nostra stirpe, almeno in tempi recenti; e a meno che non riceviamo la nostra naturale eredità europea attraverso quegli organi naturali, non la riceviamo affatto per davvero. Riceviamo qualcos’altro; un’astrazione pedante e provinciale, inventata da pochi uomini moderni e più o meno ignoranti. Finché quegli organi sono gli unici organi di una tradizione vivente, dobbiamo vivere per mezzo di essi; ed è vero dire che non è ancora venuto il tempo per tutte le nazioni di vivere secondo una tradizione che possano tutte insieme condividere ed ereditare. Ciò significa trovare qualcosa che gli uomini buoni amino ancor più di quanto amino il proprio paese. E l’Europa moderna non lo ha ancora trovato.
Non discuterò qui di come l’Europa debba trovarlo; ma vorrei suggerire che essa potrebbe forse cominciare col tornare alle origini civiche. Intendo dire che i paesi potrebbero non espandersi verso i continenti, ma piuttosto tornare alle città. L’umanità potrebbe trovare nelle città ciò che potrebbe ancora divenire una cittadinanza universale, come avvenne con le città dell’antichità. Ma ciò potrebbe accadere soltanto con le città che sono davvero antiche. Significherebbe quel genere di città che chiamiamo antiche solo perché sono ancora vive. Ma riposerebbe sul reale e profondamente umano sentimento riguardo ai luoghi, poiché i luoghi sono generalmente santuari.
SCIPIO AND THE CHILDREN
I HAVE lately found myself in the town of Tarragona; famous for its vinegar, which it wisely sends abroad, rather than the wine, which it still more wisely drinks at home. I have myself ordered a fair amount of the wine; I omitted to order any of the vinegar. These things are an allegory; for there is something of the same contrast between the acid taste of party politics, especially anti-clerical politics, which is all that is exported to the English papers from Spain, and the rich and joyful vintage of popular life and humour, of which nobody can get the gusto except by going to Spain. I have always noted that there is never anything new in the news; and the things which the traveller recognizes are never the things that the journalist reports. For instance, the thing that struck me first and last in Spain was the Spanish children; especially the Spanish little boys, and their relation to the Spanish fathers of the Spanish little boys. The love of fathers and sons in this country is one of the great poems of Christendom; it has, like a bewildering jewel, a hundred beautiful aspects, and especially that supremely beautiful aspect; that it is a knock in the eye for that nasty-minded old pedant Freud.
I was sitting at a cafe table with another English traveller, and I was looking at a little boy with a bow and arrows, who discharged very random shafts in all directions, and periodically turned in triumph and flung himself into the arms of his father, who was a waiter. That part of the scene was repeated all over the place, with fathers of every social type and trade. And it is no good to tell me that such humanities must be peculiar to the progressive and enlightened Catalans, in that this incident happened in a Catalan town, for I happen to remember that I first noticed the fact in Toledo and afterwards even more obviously in Madrid. And it is no good to tell me that Spaniards are all gloomy and harsh and cruel, for I have seen the children; I have also seen the parents. I might be inclined to call them spoilt children; except that it seems as if they could not be spoilt. I may also remark that one element whch specially haunts me, in the Spanish Peninsula, is the very elusive element called Liberty. Nobody seems to have the itch of interference; nobody is moved by that great motto of so much social legislation; “Go and see what Tommy is doing, and tell him he mustn’t.” Considering what this Tommy was doing, I am fairly sure that in most progressive countries, somebody would tell him he mustn’t. He shot an arrow that hit his father; probably because he was aiming at something else. He shot an arrow that hit me; but I am a BROAD target. His bow and his archery were quite inadequate; and would not have been tolerated in the scientific Archery School into which he would no doubt have been instantly drafted in any state in which sport is taken as seriously as it should be. While I was staring at him, and at some other little boys who had assembled, also to stare at him, the English traveller interrupted my dream by saying suddenly:
“What is there to see in Tarragona?”
I was instantly prompted to answer, and almost did answer,
“Why, of course, the boy with the bow and arrows! There is also the waiter.”
But I stopped myself in time, remembering the strange philosophy of sightseeing; and then I found my mind rather a blank. I knew next to nothing about the town, and said so. I said the Cathedral was very fine; and then added with increasing vagueness; “I’m afraid I don’t know anything at all about Tarragona. I have a hazy idea that Scipio got buried here or born here. I can’t even remember which.”
“Who was it who was buried or born?” he inquired patiently.
“Scipio,” I said, with an increasing sense of weakness; then I added as in feeble self-defence, “Africanus.”
He inquired whether I meant that the man was an African. I feared, in any case, that the word ‘African’ would not instantly summon up before his imagination the figure of St. Augustine; or even of Hannibal. It would more probably suggest to him a coal-black negro. So I said that I was sure he was not an African; I believed he was a Roman; certainly he was a Roman General; and I thought it was too early in history for a Roman General to have really belonged to what were afterwards the Roman Provinces. I had always understood that Carthage, or the Carthaginian influence, practically prevailed over all these parts at that time. And even as I said the words a thought came to me, like a blinding and even a blasting light.
The traveller was very legitimately bored. After the mysterious manner of his kind, he was not bored with sightseeing, but he was bored with history; especially ancient history. I do not blame him for that; I only puzzle upon why a man bored with history should take endless trouble to visit historic sites. He was patently one of those who think that all those things happened such a long time ago that they cannot make much difference now. But it had suddenly occurred to me that this rather remote example really might, perhaps, make a great deal of difference now. I tried to tell him so; and he must have formed the impression that I was raving mad.
“Would it be all the same,” I asked, “if that little boy were thrown into a furnace as a religious ceremony, when his family went to church on Sunday? That is what Carthage did; it worshipped Moloch; and sacrificed batches of babies as a regular religious ritual. That is what Scipio Africanus did; he defeated Carthage, when it had nearly defeated the world. Somehow, I seem to feel a fine shade of difference.”
My companion did not reply; and I continued to watch the archer; and though Apollo was a Pagan god, I am glad that such a sun-god slew the Punic Python; and that even before the Faith, those ancient arrows cast down Moloch for us all.
THE REAL ISSUE
THE FOLLOWING incident took place the other day outside a crowded cafe in Paris. It also took place outside half a hundred other cafes in Paris and half a million other cafes scattered through about two-thirds of Christendom. The incident or something like it, was so natural as to seem trivial in such places; and probably nobody noticed it except two persons seated near that one small table. One of them was a wealthy American lady who had seen the sights of Paris. The other was a journalist, astray in foreign parts, who had resolutely refused to see them.
Scipione e i bambini
Di recente mi sono trovato nella città di Tarragona; famosa per il suo aceto che invia saggiamente all’estero, piuttosto che per il vino, che beve ancora più saggiamente in casa. Ho ordinato una discreta quantità del vino; ho omesso di ordinare l’aceto. Queste cose sono un’allegoria; perché c’è qualcosa dello stesso contrasto tra il gusto acido della politica dei partiti, specialmente la politica anticlericale, che è tutto ciò che viene esportato sui giornali inglesi dalla Spagna, e il ricco e gioioso raccolto della vita popolare e dell’umorismo, di cui nessuno può cogliere il gusto se non andando in Spagna. Ho sempre notato che nelle notizie non c’è mai nulla di nuovo; e le cose che il viaggiatore riconosce non sono mai quelle che il giornalista riporta. Per esempio, la cosa che mi ha colpito per prima e per ultima in Spagna è stata i bambini spagnoli; specialmente i piccoli maschi spagnoli, e la loro relazione con i padri spagnoli dei piccoli maschi spagnoli. L’amore tra padri e figli in questo paese è uno dei grandi poemi della cristianità; ha, come un gioiello sconcertante, cento aspetti belli, e specialmente quell’aspetto supremamente bello: che è un pugno negli occhi per quel vecchio pedante di Freud.
Ero seduto a un tavolo di caffè con un altro viaggiatore inglese, e stavo guardando un bambino con arco e frecce, che scagliava dardi molto casuali in tutte le direzioni, e periodicamente si voltava trionfante e si gettava tra le braccia di suo padre, che era un cameriere. Quella parte della scena si ripeteva ovunque, con padri di ogni tipo sociale e mestiere. E non serve a nulla dirmi che tali umanità devono essere peculiari ai progressisti ed illuminati catalani, in quanto questo episodio è accaduto in una città catalana, perché mi ricordo di aver notato il fatto per la prima volta a Toledo e poi ancora più chiaramente a Madrid. E non serve a nulla dirmi che gli spagnoli sono tutti cupi e duri e crudeli, perché ho visto i bambini; ho anche visto i genitori. Potrei essere incline a chiamarli bambini viziati; tranne che sembra come se non potessero essere viziatii. Posso anche osservare che un elemento che mi perseguita in modo particolare, nella penisola spagnola, è l’elemento molto elusivo chiamato Libertà. Nessuno sembra avere il prurito di interferire; nessuno è mosso da quel grande motto di tanta legislazione sociale: “Vai a vedere cosa sta facendo Tommy e digli che non deve farlo”. Considerando cosa stava facendo Tommy, sono abbastanza sicuro che nella maggior parte dei paesi progressisti, qualcuno gli direbbe di non farlo. Scoccò una freccia che colpì suo padre; probabilmente perché mirava a qualcos’altro. Scoccò una freccia che colpì me; ma sono un bersaglio AMPIO. Il suo arco e la sua arcata erano del tutto inadeguati; e non sarebbero stati tollerati nella scuola di tiro con l’arco scientifica in cui senza dubbio sarebbe stato immediatamente arruolato in qualsiasi stato in cui lo sport è preso sul serio come dovrebbe essere. Mentre lo fissavo, e alcuni altri bambini si erano radunati, anche per fissarlo, il viaggiatore inglese interruppe il mio sogno dicendo improvvisamente:
«Che cosa c’è da vedere a Tarragona?»
Mi venne subito voglia di rispondere e quasi lo feci
“Ma certo, il ragazzo con l’arco e le frecce! C’è anche il cameriere.”
Ma mi sono fermato in tempo, ricordando la strana filosofia del turismo; e poi ho trovato la mia mente piuttosto vuota. Non sapevo quasi nulla della città, e lo dissi. Dissi che la Cattedrale era molto bella; e poi aggiunsi con crescente vaghezza: «Temo di non sapere assolutamente nulla di Tarragona. Ho un’idea vaga che Scipione sia stato sepolto qui o nato qui. Non riesco nemmeno a ricordare quale».
«Chi è stato sepolto o nato?» chiese pazientemente.
«Scipione», dissi con un senso di debolezza sempre più forte; poi aggiunsi come per una fiacca autodifesa: «Africano».
Chiese se intendessi dire che l’uomo era un africano. Temevo, in ogni caso, che la parola ‘africano’ non evocasse immediatamente davanti alla sua immaginazione la figura di Sant’Agostino; o anche di Annibale. Avrebbe più probabilmente suggerito a lui un negro nero come il carbone. Così dissi che ero sicuro che non fosse un africano; credevo fosse un romano; certamente era un generale romano; e pensavo che fosse troppo presto nella storia perché un generale romano appartenesse davvero a quello che in seguito divennero le province romane. Avevo sempre capito che Cartagine, o l’influenza cartaginese, prevalesse praticamente su tutte queste parti in quel periodo. E anche mentre dicevo queste parole mi venne un pensiero, come una luce accecante e persino devastante.
Il viaggiatore era molto giustamente annoiato. Dopo il misterioso modo di fare della sua specie, non si annoiava delle visite turistiche, ma si annoiava con la storia; specialmente l’antica storia. Non gliene faccio una colpa; mi domando solo perché un uomo annoiato dalla storia dovrebbe prendersi infinita briga per visitare i luoghi storici. Era palesemente uno di quelli che pensano che tutte quelle cose siano accadute tanto tempo fa che non possono fare molta differenza ora. Ma mi era improvvisamente venuto in mente che questo esempio piuttosto remoto potesse davvero, forse, fare una grande differenza adesso. Ho cercato di dirglielo; e deve essersi fatto l’impressione che fossi pazzo furioso.
“Non farebbe la stessa impressione,” chiesi, “se quel bambino fosse gettato in una fornace come cerimonia religiosa quando la sua famiglia va in chiesa di domenica? È quello che faceva Cartagine; adorava Moloch e sacrificava gruppi di neonati come rituale religioso regolare. È quello che fece Scipione l’Africano; sconfisse Cartagine quando essa aveva quasi sconfitto il mondo. In qualche modo, mi sembra di percepire una fine sfumatura di differenza.”
Il mio compagno non rispose e io continuai a osservare l’arciere; e sebbene Apollo fosse un dio pagano, sono felice che un tale dio del sole abbia ucciso il serpente punico; e che ancora prima della Fede, quelle antiche frecce abbiano abbattuto Moloch per tutti noi.
LA VERITÀ NASCOSTA
Il seguente episodio si è verificato l’altro giorno fuori da un caffè affollato a Parigi. Si è verificato anche fuori da mezza dozzina di altri caffè a Parigi e da mezzo milione di altri caffè sparsi in circa due terzi della cristianità. L’episodio, o qualcosa di simile, era così naturale da sembrare banale in quei luoghi; e probabilmente nessuno lo ha notato tranne due persone sedute vicino a quel piccolo tavolo. Una di loro era una ricca signora americana che aveva visto le attrazioni turistiche di Parigi. L’altra era un giornalista, smarrito in terre straniere, che si era risolutamente rifiutato di vederle.
There sat at this small table a poor Frenchman with his wife and child; he was rather shabbier than what we should call an artisan, but he was probably a small shopkeeper; he was independent; it had never occurred to him to pretend to be a gentleman. He and his wife each proceeded to sip a very tall glass of very light beer, called a bock, and to look out cheerfully at the coloured lights and the motley procession of mankind passing under them. The little boy threw his arms round his father’s neck with sudden affection; for he was quite ignorant, had never read even the most elementary text-book of Psycho-Analysis and did not know anything about Oedipus. Then his father gave him, equally impulsively, a gulp out of his glass of beer. The little boy then turned and embraced his mother, who also, moved by a sense of symmetry and equality, gave him another gulp out of her glass of beer. At that moment a lame man came by begging; and the man at the table (who would have been turned away from many of our respectable houses as a beggar himself), took some small coins from his pocket and gave them to the child, with a few words in an undertone. The child then gave them to the beggar. That was all. But one of the two strangers in that city knew he had been looking at the palladium and high citadel, round which rages the whole human war of our civilization and our century; and that all men are divided precisely and sharply by what they think of that one thing. Those who understand it are on one side and those who do not understand it on the other. The former see a thousand things and generally say very little about them. They understand that ritual is natural and not artificial. They understand what is really meant by the equality of the sexes: “In this we both have a part and he in us, equally.”
They understand that the world ends when that trinity is really broken, whether by confounding the persons or dividing the substance. They understand the word ‘sacrament’, which is simply senseless gibberish to everybody else. They understand that politics and economics and every thing practical means providing the huge human cafe with such tables—but separate tables. They understand that when this has been done as fully and fairly as possible, there will still always be somebody limping by; and that he must not be forgotten. Above all, they understand the impulse that makes the most innocent the intermediary and the almoner; they understand propitiation and the priest.
There are also other kinds of people. For the well-dressed American rose from her table with a sort of snort and went on her way to see the sights of Paris. We must not be hard on her; in truth the poor lady suffered from delusions; for she laboured under the extraordinary notion that she had seen ignorant people giving a child Alcohol; and she was ridden with a sort of nightmare, to the effect that a beggar is a horrible thing.
A questo tavolino sedeva un povero francese con la moglie e il bambino; era piuttosto più malandato di quello che noi chiameremmo un artigiano, ma era probabilmente un piccolo bottegaio; era indipendente; non gli era mai passato per la testa di fingersi un gentiluomo. Lui e la moglie si misero entrambi a sorseggiare un altissimo bicchiere di birra molto leggera, chiamata bock, e a guardare allegramente fuori le luci colorate e la variopinta processione dell’umanità che passava sotto di esse. Il bambino gettò le braccia al collo del padre con improvviso affetto; poiché era del tutto ignorante, non aveva mai letto neppure il più elementare manuale di psicoanalisi e non sapeva nulla di Edipo. Allora il padre gli concesse, con altrettanta impulsività, una sorsata dal suo bicchiere di birra. Il bambino allora si voltò e abbracciò la madre, la quale anch’essa, mossa da un senso di simmetria e di uguaglianza, gli concesse un’altra sorsata dal suo bicchiere di birra. In quel momento passò uno storpio a chiedere l’elemosina; e l’uomo al tavolo (che sarebbe stato cacciato da molte delle nostre case rispettabili come mendicante egli stesso), prese alcune monetine dalla tasca e le diede al bambino, con poche parole sottovoce. Il bambino le diede poi al mendicante. Tutto qui. Ma uno dei due forestieri in quella città sapeva di aver guardato il palladio e l’alta rocca, attorno a cui infuria tutta la guerra umana della nostra civiltà e del nostro secolo; e che tutti gli uomini si dividono con precisione e nettezza secondo ciò che pensano di quell’unica cosa. Coloro che la comprendono stanno da una parte e coloro che non la comprendono dall’altra. I primi vedono mille cose e in genere ne dicono ben poco. Comprendono che il rito è naturale e non artificiale. Comprendono ciò che davvero si intende per uguaglianza dei sessi: “In questo entrambi abbiamo una parte, ed egli in noi, in egual misura.”
Comprendono che il mondo finisce quando quella trinità è davvero spezzata, sia confondendo le persone sia dividendo la sostanza. Comprendono la parola «sacramento», che per tutti gli altri è semplicemente un balbettio privo di senso. Comprendono che la politica e l’economia e ogni cosa pratica significano dotare l’immensa caffetteria umana di tavoli simili… ma di tavoli separati. Comprendono che quando ciò è stato fatto nel modo più pieno ed equo possibile, ci sarà comunque sempre qualcuno che passa zoppicando; e che egli non deve essere dimenticato. Soprattutto, comprendono l’impulso che rende il più innocente l’intermediario e l’elemosiniere; comprendono la propiziazione e il sacerdote.
Ci sono anche altri tipi di persone. Poiché la ben vestita americana si alzò dal suo tavolo con una specie di sbuffo e proseguì per la sua strada a vedere le attrazioni di Parigi. Non dobbiamo essere duri con lei; in verità la povera signora soffriva di allucinazioni; poiché era afflitta dalla straordinaria idea di aver visto gente ignorante dare dell’alcol a un bambino; ed era ossessionata da una specie di incubo, per cui un mendicante è una cosa orribile.
PART FIVE: THE SPICE OF LIFE
THE COMIC CONSTABLE
SOME LITTLE time ago a small, strange incident occurred to me which is not without its application to the history and quality of this country. I was sitting quietly in rustic retirement, endeavouring to feel as bucolic as possible, when I was summoned to the telephone, not perhaps the most bucolic of institutions. Nor, indeed, was it the voice of any other ale house gaffer that addressed me through the instrument, but the voice of a man I know on one of the big London dailies.
He said, “We hear you’ve been made Constable of Beaconsfield.”
I said, “Then your hearing is defective.”
He said after a pause. “Well, but haven’t you been made Constable of Beaconsfield?” “Why, of course not,” I said. “Have you been made Pope of Rome? Am I a person whom any sane men (except perhaps the criminals) would want to have for a constable?”
“Well,” replied my friend doubtfully, “It’s down in the ‘Daily Gazette’, anyhow. ‘Mr. G. K. Chesterton has been nominated as a Parish Constable of Beaconsfield.’”
“And a jolly good joke, too,” I answered. “I thought you had a more vivid and vulgar sense of humour.”
“We may take it, then, that the thing is a hoax?” said the inquisitor. “You may indeed,” I said, “and apparently a successful one.” I then hung up the receiver and went back and tried to feel bucolic again.
When I had tried for three minutes the telephone rang again. A well-known weekly illustrated paper had important business with me.
“We hear,” said a grave voice, “that you are now Parish Constable of Beaconsfield, and any experiences of yours in that capacity—”
“I am not Parish Constable of Beaconsfield,” I cried in a tearful rage, “nor am I Senior Wrangler, nor Gold Stick in Waiting, nor the Grand Lama, nor the Living Skeleton, nor the Derby Favourite, nor the Queen of Love and Beauty at an approaching tournament. Has the human race lost all notion of a joke?”
I went back somewhat impatiently to my bucolic efforts; and then another bell rang, this time the front-door bell. I was informed that the representative of yet a third paper (an illustrated daily this time) had come down all the way from London with a camera to photograph me as a Parish Constable. I do not know whether he thought to find me in some flamboyant uniform, with feathers and epaulettes, or whether he merely wished to snapshot the new and rapturous expression of my face after receiving the appointment. Anyhow, I told him he was welcome to photograph me as much as he chose in the character of “The Man Who is not Parish Constable of Beaconsfield.” He photographed me in a number of highly unconstabulary attitudes (calculated in themselves to refute the slander), and then he went away.
It happened that about a quarter of an hour afterwards a local Beaconsfield acquaintance dropped in for ten minutes’ talk, and to him I recounted with mingled entertainment and fury how all these experienced journalists had been taken in by a joke that seemed to me as obvious as anything in a comic paper. “I suppose,” I said, “that whenever Punch playfully suggests I caused the earthquake at San Francisco by sitting down in Beaconsfield, I shall have to write to The Times about it, and clear my character.”
My local friend listened with interest to the farce, laughed at the inquiring newspaper, was amiably amused at the disappointed photographer, and at the end said very quietly and casually, “All the same, you know, you are nominated as a Parish Constable of Beaconsfield.”
I turned, stiff with astonishment; I saw the shocking sincerity in his eyes,
“But this is madness,” I cried, “It must be a joke.”
“If it is,” he said, apologetically, “it is a joke written up on the church door.”
My wits were scattered to the four winds; I collected them with difficulty. I could not fancy that those who go to a modern parish church would permit such a thing as a practical joke in the porch. It was no time for half measures, but rather for desperate ones. It was clearly necessary to go to church.
My friend and I walked to the stone entrance of that strong and fine building, and there, sure enough, stood in cold print the openly crazy statement that some five men, including Mr. G. K. Chesterton, had been nominated as Parish Constables, and that objections to them would be entertained. Unless Englishmen have lost their historic fire, those objections should be prompt and overwhelming. On the way back my friend fortified and consoled me by describing the institution which had thus forcibly descended on me like an extinguisher. I have since received a letter from a kind correspondent including much the same technicalities, for which I am very grateful; but at the time the explanation was a little confusing. The only thing I clearly remember out of the tangle of rules is this; that I must not go officially beyond the bounds of my Constablewick, “except in hot pursuit of a fugitive.” I may be enticed to toss myself over a spiked wall into Middlesex; but only if a fleet-footed burglar has tossed himself over it before my eyes. I may be observed any day leaping across the Thames into Berkshire, but only when some panting bigamist has leapt it just before me. I can most earnestly and even austerely promise that on ordinary occasions I shall permit myself no such impetuous trespass.
But we will not dwell upon the duties, because there are no duties; nor upon the salary, because there is no salary; nor upon the uniform (the only thing I really regret) because, alas! there is no uniform. But if we consider the thing itself, and why so wild a joke ever came to be possible as the present writer being a constable, we may find ourselves facing some rather curious and interesting elements in the old life of England. The institution of the Parish Constable dates from the time when there was no official and efficient police; but when there was a great deal of incidental local sentiment and local self-government. In short, the Parish Constable belongs to another age, when there was not really such a thing as a constable, but when there was such a thing as a parish. The very form of his appointment breathes of a somewhat breezier age; for (as in my own case) he is not even asked if he will stand. This suggests the jolly time when there was no nonsense about wanting to serve your country; no buying of peerages by breeding cattle; no climbing into rich idleness by means of ‘polite work’.
PARTE QUINTA: IL SALE DELLA VITA
IL CONNESTABILE COMICO
QUALCHE tempo fa mi capitò un piccolo, strano incidente, che non è privo di attinenza con la storia e il carattere di questo paese. Me ne stavo tranquillamente seduto nel mio ritiro campestre, sforzandomi di sentirmi il più bucolico possibile, quando fui chiamato al telefono, che non è forse la più bucolica delle istituzioni. Né, in verità, fu la voce di un qualche altro vecchio avventore di taverna a rivolgersi a me attraverso l’apparecchio, bensì la voce di un uomo che conosco, di uno dei grandi quotidiani londinesi.
Disse: «Abbiamo saputo che siete stato nominato Connestabile di Beaconsfield».
Io dissi: «Allora il vostro udito è difettoso».
Disse, dopo una pausa: «Bene, ma non siete stato nominato Connestabile di Beaconsfield?». «Ma certo che no», dissi io. «E voi siete stato nominato Papa di Roma? Sono io una persona che uomini sani di mente (salvo forse i criminali) vorrebbero avere per connestabile?».
«Bene», replicò il mio amico dubbioso, «comunque sia, sta scritto sulla ‘Daily Gazette’. ‘Il signor G. K. Chesterton è stato nominato Connestabile Parrocchiale di Beaconsfield’».
«E anche un’ottima trovata», risposi. «Vi credevo dotato di un senso dell’umorismo più vivace e più volgare».
«Possiamo dunque concludere che la cosa è una burla?», disse l’inquisitore. «Potete senz’altro», dissi io, «e a quanto pare una burla riuscita». Riattaccai poi la cornetta, tornai indietro e cercai di sentirmi di nuovo bucolico.
Quando ci avevo provato per tre minuti, il telefono squillò di nuovo. Un noto settimanale illustrato aveva affari importanti da trattare con me.
«Abbiamo saputo», disse una voce grave, «che ora siete Connestabile Parrocchiale di Beaconsfield, e qualunque vostra esperienza in tale veste…».
«Non sono Connestabile Parrocchiale di Beaconsfield», gridai in una collera lacrimosa, «né sono Senior Wrangler, né Gold Stick in Waiting, né il Gran Lama, né lo Scheletro Vivente, né il Favorito del Derby, né la Regina d’Amore e di Bellezza a un imminente torneo. Ha forse la razza umana perduto ogni nozione di uno scherzo?».
Tornai un po’ spazientito ai miei sforzi bucolici; e allora suonò un altro campanello, questa volta quello della porta d’ingresso. Fui informato che il rappresentante di un terzo giornale ancora (un quotidiano illustrato, stavolta) era venuto giù fin da Londra con una macchina fotografica per ritrarmi in veste di Connestabile Parrocchiale. Non so se pensasse di trovarmi in qualche sgargiante uniforme, con piume e spalline, o se desiderasse semplicemente cogliere in un’istantanea la nuova ed estatica espressione del mio volto dopo aver ricevuto la nomina. Comunque sia, gli dissi che era libero di fotografarmi quanto volesse nel personaggio dell’«Uomo Che Non è Connestabile Parrocchiale di Beaconsfield». Mi fotografò in una quantità di atteggiamenti assai poco connestabileschi (di per sé calcolati a confutare la calunnia), e poi se ne andò.
Accadde che circa un quarto d’ora dopo un conoscente locale di Beaconsfield passò a scambiare dieci minuti di chiacchiere, e a lui raccontai con misto di divertimento e furia come tutti questi giornalisti esperti si fossero lasciati abbindolare da uno scherzo che a me pareva ovvio come qualunque cosa in un giornaletto umoristico. «Suppongo», dissi, «che ogni volta che il Punch suggerirà scherzosamente che io ho provocato il terremoto di San Francisco sedendomi a Beaconsfield, dovrò scrivere al Times al riguardo, e riabilitare il mio buon nome».
Il mio amico del posto ascoltò con interesse la farsa, rise del giornale ficcanaso, si divertì amabilmente del fotografo deluso, e alla fine disse con molta calma e noncuranza: «Ciò nondimeno, sapete, siete davvero nominato Connestabile Parrocchiale di Beaconsfield».
Mi voltai, irrigidito dallo stupore; vidi la sconvolgente sincerità nei suoi occhi,
«Ma questa è follia», gridai, «Dev’essere uno scherzo».
«Se lo è», disse lui, in tono di scusa, «è uno scherzo affisso sulla porta della chiesa».
I miei sensi si dispersero ai quattro venti; li raccolsi a fatica. Non riuscivo a immaginare che coloro i quali frequentano una moderna chiesa parrocchiale potessero permettere una cosa come uno scherzo pratico nel portico. Non era tempo di mezze misure, bensì piuttosto di misure disperate. Era chiaramente necessario andare in chiesa.
Il mio amico ed io ci recammo a piedi all’ingresso di pietra di quel forte e bell’edificio, e là, per l’appunto, campeggiava in freddi caratteri di stampa la dichiarazione apertamente insensata che alcuni cinque uomini, compreso il signor G. K. Chesterton, erano stati nominati Connestabili Parrocchiali, e che le obiezioni nei loro confronti sarebbero state prese in considerazione. A meno che gli inglesi non abbiano perduto il loro fuoco storico, quelle obiezioni dovrebbero essere pronte e travolgenti. Sulla via del ritorno il mio amico mi rincuorò e mi consolò descrivendomi l’istituzione che era così bruscamente calata su di me come uno spegnitoio. Ho da allora ricevuto una lettera da un gentile corrispondente contenente pressappoco le stesse tecnicalità, per le quali gli sono molto grato; ma sul momento la spiegazione fu un po’ confusa. L’unica cosa che ricordo chiaramente dell’intrico di regole è questa; che non devo spingermi ufficialmente oltre i confini del mio Connestabilato, «salvo che all’inseguimento a caldo di un fuggitivo». Potrò essere indotto a scagliarmi al di là di un muro irto di punte fin dentro il Middlesex; ma soltanto se un ladro dai piedi veloci vi si sia scagliato prima sotto i miei occhi. Potrò essere avvistato un giorno qualsiasi mentre balzo al di là del Tamigi dentro il Berkshire, ma soltanto quando qualche bigamo trafelato l’avrà balzato appena prima di me. Posso con la più grande serietà e persino austerità promettere che nelle occasioni ordinarie non mi permetterò alcuna simile impetuosa violazione di domicilio.
Ma non ci soffermeremo sui doveri, perché non vi sono doveri; né sullo stipendio, perché non vi è stipendio; né sull’uniforme (l’unica cosa che davvero rimpiango) perché, ahimè! non vi è uniforme. Ma se consideriamo la cosa in sé, e perché mai uno scherzo tanto insensato quale l’essere connestabile il presente scrivente sia potuto diventare possibile, potremmo trovarci di fronte ad alcuni elementi piuttosto curiosi e interessanti della vecchia vita d’Inghilterra. L’istituzione del Connestabile Parrocchiale risale al tempo in cui non esisteva una polizia ufficiale ed efficiente; ma in cui esisteva una gran quantità di sentimento locale spontaneo e di autogoverno locale. In breve, il Connestabile Parrocchiale appartiene a un’altra epoca, in cui non esisteva veramente una cosa come un connestabile, ma esisteva una cosa come una parrocchia. La forma stessa della sua nomina spira l’aria di un’epoca alquanto più gioviale; poiché (come nel mio stesso caso) non gli si chiede neppure se intende candidarsi. Ciò suggerisce quell’allegro tempo in cui non c’erano fronzoli intorno al voler servire il proprio paese; nessun acquisto di titoli nobiliari allevando bestiame; nessun arrampicarsi verso un ricco ozio per mezzo del ‘lavoro ammodo’.
Doubtless it is august and dignified to be a constable. So it is august and dignified to be a juryman; for to be a juryman is to be a judge, but in nothing is the jury system more medieval (that is, more human) than in the fact that it takes for granted that every good man will primarily care more for his babies or his bullocks than for the codes and thrones of legality; and that, therefore, he must be summoned to a jury. That is perhaps what Christ meant when he described the Kingdom of Heaven as sending into the highways and byeways, and compelling them to come in; perhaps He meant that if you want the simple and modest mortal you must call him. However this may be with the Kingdom of Heaven, it is assuredly so with the Kingdom of Earth. The other method leaves us open to that offensive class which comes without being called, the vulgarly and basely ambitious, who are already destroying England.
The other element in the case is so very long that I will here make it very short. The Parish Constable, nominated by a District Council, is one of the very few reminders of a certain natural notion of self-government which modern science and modern discipline have made very difficult to retain. For the present I will put it merely in this way: What would any six streets in Hoxton or Whitechapel give if they could elect (however indirectly) the policeman who should stand at the street corner?
CAPONE’S PAL
I HAVE sometimes shocked the conventions of our time by defending Private Property; and pointing out that Private Property has really been destroyed by Private Enterprise. In connection with this paradox, that our common conscience does really disapprove of a thief, I came upon a very curious case the other day; an actual incident which I will leave to speak for itself. It seemed to me to combine amusement with instruction.
I had wandered out of a famous Spanish port and found myself in a sort of seaside suburb. I could not speak the language; but Latins are so intelligent that they do without language. I turned, as I had done twenty times, into a little cafe, which was empty, except for a sturdy man on a stool, with his broad back to me; and he jumped down with a kind of alertness which is neither Spanish nor English. He was evidently the proprietor, and he spoke English fluently, but with a blended accent I could not define; till I realized that he was not a Spaniard speaking English, but a Spaniard speaking American. Some accident of talk led me to admit that I followed the low trade of literature; whereupon he leapt into new life and proclaimed that he also had written a book. He showed me the book. It seemed to me on a hasty glance, rather a good book, written with spirit and humour; but it was simply his own memoirs as a gunman and a gangster under Al Capone. It was a perfectly honest record of dishonesty; and described robbing and racketeering without any of the cant that excuses capitalism. Still, there was something warming to a melodramatic mind in being alone with a gunman. He was dark and brooding and suddenly broke off to say, “I shan’t write another book.”
“No,” I said applauding warmly, “keeping a bar is much better than writing a book. Many an Englishman has wished he kept a pub instead of keeping a publisher.”
And at this he was transfigured into tremendous and vibrant vitality. He shouted till the tavern shook with the crimes of his publisher. He said that his publisher had cheated him at every turn. He said he had to rush round the world to see that all his publishers and translators were not doing him out of his well-earned money. I think it quite likely that they were. I also have no illusions about publishing or other phases of modern plutocracy. But I thought it was faintly ironical. I reminded him of Byron’s saying that Barrabas was a publisher.
“In short,” I said firmly, “it was sheer robbery.”
“Sure,” he said with explosive emphasis; and we parted excellent friends. “It was just Robbery!”
ON LOSING ONE’S HEAD
WHEN I was a little boy I had an imagination, though this has long been washed out of me by the wordy abstractions of politics and journalism. For imagination, real imagination, is never a vague thing of vistas. Real imagination is always materialistic; for imagination consists of images, generally graven images. There is a mad literalism about imagination; and when I had it I turned everything that any one mentioned into a concrete body and a staring shape. Thus, I would hear grown-up people using ordinary proverbs and figures of speech; pale, worn-out proverbs, battered and colourless figures of speech. But every one of these phrases sprang out for me as fierce and vivid as a motto written in fireworks. For some reason I had a particularly graphic visual concept in the case of nautical metaphors. Thus, when I heard that my uncle on a sea voyage “had got his sea legs” I pictured the most horrible bodily transformations in my uncle. Had my uncle now got four legs? Or had it been necessary for his two original and (to my eye) unobjectionable legs to be amputated by the ship’s doctor? Did the new legs arrive as a sort of extra luggage, or did they loathsomely grow upon him, like hair or fungoids, with all the awful unnaturalness of Nature? I pictured my uncle’s sea legs as two green and glittering members, covered with scales like fishes, and bearing some resemblance to the two fish tails with which exuberant Renaissance artists sometimes provided Tritons and mermaids. Again when I heard (in some seafaring connection) that “the Captain kept his weather eye open,” I assumed with faultless infantile logic that he kept the other one quite shut. And in some dreams I rather pictured the Captain’s weather eye as being some separate and eccentric kind of eye, like that of a Cyclops; an eye of blue sky or lightning that opened suddenly in his hat or his coat-tails and blazed through black fantastic tempests; a strange star of the storm.
But there were many cases, even among more terrestrial and commonplace metaphors, where the material metaphor photographed itself on my fancy. One of them was the phrase about a man “Losing his heart.” A man, considered as a material envelope, seemed so securely done up that how the heart could get out of the body was a problem analogous to that of how the apple could get into the dumpling. Perhaps, I mused, the phrase about a man having his heart in his mouth might throw some light on the somewhat revolting phrase, which spoke of a man with his heart in his boots; where there was clearly no thoroughfare. From this my childish taste turned with a certain relief to the easier and more popular picture of a man losing his head; which seemed the sort of thing that might happen to anybody. Indeed, by this dream of symbolic decapitation I was much haunted in infancy and am not infrequently inspired and comforted even to this day. Whatever other metaphors may mean, this metaphor of the lost head has some primary and poetic meaning; and I have written many bad poems, bad fairy tales, and bad apologues in my industrious attempt to find it out and declare it. The connection between the animal and intellectual meaning of it became close and even confused. I vaguely thought of Charles I as having lost his head equally in both senses; which is not perhaps wholly untrue. When I read of the miracle of St. Dennis, who carried his head in his hand, it seemed to me quite a soothing and graceful proceeding, like a gentleman carrying his hat in his hand. St. Dennis did not lose his head anyhow; he carried it in his hand so as not to lose it; as ladies do their ridiculous handbags.
Indeed, this drifting and dancing dream of decapitation, in which kings and saints figured with gothic fantasticality, had a kind of allegory in the core of it. The separation of body and head is a sort of symbol of that separation of body and soul which is made by all the heresies and the sophistries, which are the nightmares of the mind. The mere materialist is a body that has lost its head; the mere spiritualist is a head that has mislaid its body. Under the same symbol can be found the old distinction between the sinner and the heretic about which theology has uttered many paradoxes, more profitable to study than some modern people fancy. For there is one kind of man who takes off his head and throws it in the gutter, who dethrones and forgets the reason that should be his ruler and witness; and the horrible headless body strides away over cities and sanctuaries, breaking them down and treading them into mire and blood. He is the criminal; but there is another figure equally sinister and strange. This man forgets his body, with all its instinctive honesties and recurrent sanities and laws of God; he leaves his body working in the fields like a slave; and the head goes away to think alone. The head, detached and dehumanized, thinks faster and faster like a clock gone mad; it is never heated by any generous blood, never softened by any healthy fatigue, never checked or warned by any of the terrible tocsins of instinct. The head thinks because it cannot do anything else; because it cannot feel or doubt or know. This man is the heretic; and in this way all the heresies were made. The anarchist goes off his head and the sophist goes off his body; I will not renew the old dispute about which is the worse amputation; but I should recommend the prudent reader to avoid both.
THE SPICE OF LIFE**
FORGIVE ME if I begin by enacting the part which I have played at so many dinner-parties, I mean the part of the skeleton at the feast. Pardon me if the first few words that reach you resemble a hollow voice from the tomb. For the truth is that the very title of this series makes me feel a little funereal. When I was asked to speak on the Spice of Life, I am sorry to say that the first thought that crossed my perverse and morbid mind was that spices, as spices, are quite as much associated with death as with life. Corpses embalmed and preserved were always swathed amid spices; mummies also, I suppose. I am no Egyptologist to decide the point. But even if they were, you would hardly go sniffing round a mummy in the British Museum, drawing deep breaths and saying, “This is indeed the spice of life.” Egypt was almost a civilization organized as a funeral procession; it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the living lived to serve the dead. And yet I suppose that an actual Egyptian walking about alive, was in no hurry to be spiced. Or take a homelier scene nearer home. Suppose you are chased by a mad bull; we will not debate which animal enjoys more of the spice of life; but both at the moment will give unmistakable signs of life. But the quadruped must wait until he is killed and cut up into cold beef, before he can have the pride and privilege of being spiced beef. In short, I want you to remember first of all that there has been in history, not only the spice of life, but something else that may fairly be called the spice of death. And I mention it first because it is a sort of parable; and there are a good many things in the modern world that seem to me to be dead, not to say damned, and yet are considered very spicy.
I will not dwell on this morbid parallel. Heaven forbid that I should suggest that some ladies are rather like mummies walking about, with very beautiful faces painted on the mummy-cases: or that some young gentlemen going the pace exhibit all the culture and selective subtlety of mad bulls. I am concerned with a much more important question at the back of this one. It seems to me that a great many people, whom I am far from calling mummies or mad bulls, are at this moment paying rather too much attention to the spice of life, and rather too little attention to life. Do not misunderstand me. I am very fond of spiced beef and all the spices; I always dread that the Puritan reformers will suddenly forbid mustard and pepper as they did malt and hops; on the absurd ground that salt and mustard are as unnecessary as music. But while I resist the suggestion that we must eat beef without mustard, I do recognize that there is now a much deeper and more subtle danger that men may want to eat mustard without beef. I mean that they may lose their appetite; their appetite for beef and bread and cheese and the broad daylight of life; and depend entirely on spices and condiments. I have even been blamed for defending the spices of life against what was called the Simple Life. I have been blamed for making myself a champion of beer and skittles. Fortunately, if I was a champion of skittles, there was never any danger of my being a champion at skittles. But I have played ordinary games like skittles, always badly; but all healthy people will agree that you never enjoy a game till you enjoy being beaten at the game. I have even played golf in Scotland before Arthur Balfour brought it to England and it became a fashion and then a religion. I have been since inhibited by a difficulty in regarding a game as a religion, and the horrid secret of my failure is that I never could quite see the difference between cricket and golf, as I played them when I was a boy, and puss-in-the-corner and honey-pots as I played them when I was a child. Perhaps those nursery games are now forgotten; anyhow, I will not reveal what good games they were, lest they should become fashionable. If once they were taken seriously in that most serious world, the world of Sport, enormous results will follow. The shops will sell a special Slipper for Hunt-the-Slipper, or a caddy will follow the player with a bag full of fifteen different slippers. Honey-pots will mean money-pots; and there will be a ‘corner’ in puss-in-the-corner.
Ma vi erano molti casi, anche fra le metafore più terrestri e comuni, in cui la metafora materiale si imprimeva sulla mia fantasia. Uno di questi era l’espressione riferita a un uomo che «perde il cuore». Un uomo, considerato come un involucro materiale, sembrava così saldamente confezionato che il modo in cui il cuore potesse uscire dal corpo era un problema analogo a quello di come la mela potesse entrare nel dolce ripieno. Forse, meditavo, l’espressione riferita a un uomo che ha il cuore in gola potrebbe gettare qualche luce sull’espressione alquanto ripugnante che parlava di un uomo col cuore negli stivali; dove chiaramente non c’era passaggio. Da qui il mio gusto infantile si volgeva con un certo sollievo all’immagine più facile e più diffusa di un uomo che perde la testa; il che sembrava il genere di cosa che potesse capitare a chiunque. Anzi, da questo sogno di decapitazione simbolica fui molto assillato nell’infanzia e non di rado ne sono ispirato e confortato ancora oggi. Qualunque cosa altre metafore possano significare, questa metafora della testa perduta ha un qualche significato primario e poetico; e ho scritto molte cattive poesie, cattive fiabe e cattivi apologhi nel mio industrioso tentativo di scoprirlo e dichiararlo. La connessione tra il significato animale e quello intellettuale di essa divenne stretta e persino confusa. Pensavo vagamente a Carlo I come a uno che avesse perso la testa ugualmente in entrambi i sensi; il che forse non è del tutto falso. Quando leggevo del miracolo di san Dionigi, che portava la testa in mano, mi pareva un procedimento del tutto rassicurante e aggraziato, come un gentiluomo che porta il cappello in mano. San Dionigi non perse affatto la testa; la portava in mano per non perderla; come le signore fanno con le loro ridicole borsette.
Anzi, questo sogno vagante e danzante di decapitazione, in cui re e santi figuravano con gotica fantasticheria, aveva una sorta di allegoria nel suo nucleo. La separazione di corpo e testa è una specie di simbolo di quella separazione di corpo e anima che è operata da tutte le eresie e dai sofismi, che sono gli incubi della mente. Il puro materialista è un corpo che ha perso la testa; il puro spiritualista è una testa che ha smarrito il suo corpo. Sotto il medesimo simbolo si può ritrovare l’antica distinzione tra il peccatore e l’eretico, sulla quale la teologia ha pronunciato molti paradossi, più proficui da studiare di quanto certa gente moderna immagini. Poiché vi è un tipo d’uomo che si toglie la testa e la getta nel rigagnolo, che detronizza e dimentica la ragione che dovrebbe essere il suo sovrano e testimone; e l’orribile corpo senza testa avanza a gran passi sopra le città e i santuari, abbattendoli e calpestandoli nel fango e nel sangue. Costui è il criminale; ma c’è un’altra figura ugualmente sinistra e strana. Quest’uomo dimentica il proprio corpo, con tutte le sue oneste istintive e le sue ricorrenti sanità e le leggi di Dio; lascia il suo corpo a lavorare nei campi come uno schiavo; e la testa se ne va a pensare da sola. La testa, staccata e disumanizzata, pensa sempre più in fretta come un orologio impazzito; non è mai riscaldata da alcun generoso sangue, mai addolcita da alcuna sana stanchezza, mai frenata o avvertita da alcuno dei terribili campanelli d’allarme dell’istinto. La testa pensa perché non può fare altro; perché non può sentire né dubitare né conoscere. Quest’uomo è l’eretico; e in questo modo furono fatte tutte le eresie. L’anarchico perde la testa e il sofista perde il suo corpo; non rinnoverò l’antica disputa su quale sia la peggiore amputazione; ma raccomanderei al prudente lettore di evitarle entrambe.
IL SALE DELLA VITA**
PERDONATEMI se comincio recitando la parte che ho recitato a tante cene, intendo la parte dello scheletro al banchetto. Perdonatemi se le prime parole che vi giungono somigliano a una voce cava dal sepolcro. Poiché la verità è che il titolo stesso di questa serie mi fa sentire un po’ funereo. Quando mi fu chiesto di parlare del Sale della Vita, mi spiace dire che il primo pensiero che attraversò la mia mente perversa e morbosa fu che le spezie, in quanto spezie, sono associate alla morte quanto alla vita. I cadaveri imbalsamati e conservati erano sempre avvolti fra le spezie; anche le mummie, suppongo. Non sono egittologo per decidere il punto. Ma anche se lo fossero, difficilmente vi mettereste ad annusare intorno a una mummia al British Museum, traendo profondi respiri e dicendo: «Questo sì che è il sale della vita». L’Egitto fu quasi una civiltà organizzata come una processione funebre; non è esagerato dire che i vivi vivevano per servire i morti. Eppure suppongo che un Egizio in carne e ossa, vivo e vegeto, non avesse alcuna fretta di essere aromatizzato con le spezie. Oppure prendete una scena più familiare e più vicina a casa. Supponete di essere inseguiti da un toro infuriato; non staremo a discutere quale animale goda di più del sale della vita; ma entrambi in quel momento daranno segni inequivocabili di vita. Il quadrupede però deve aspettare di essere ucciso e tagliato in fredda carne di manzo, prima di poter avere l’onore e il privilegio di essere manzo speziato. In breve, voglio che ricordiate anzitutto che è esistito, nella storia, non solo il sale della vita, ma qualcos’altro che può a buon diritto chiamarsi il sale della morte. E lo menziono per primo perché è una sorta di parabola; e vi sono parecchie cose nel mondo moderno che mi sembrano morte, per non dire dannate, eppure vengono considerate assai piccanti.
Non mi soffermerò su questo morboso parallelo. Il cielo non voglia che io suggerisca che certe signore somigliano piuttosto a mummie che camminano, con volti bellissimi dipinti sui sarcofagi; oppure che certi giovani gentiluomini che vivono a rotta di collo esibiscono tutta la cultura e la sottigliezza selettiva dei tori infuriati. Mi preme una questione molto più importante che sta dietro a questa. Mi sembra che moltissime persone, che sono ben lungi dal chiamare mummie o tori infuriati, stiano in questo momento prestando un po’ troppa attenzione al sale della vita, e un po’ troppo poca attenzione alla vita. Non fraintendetemi. Sono molto affezionato al manzo speziato e a tutte le spezie; temo sempre che i riformatori puritani vietino d’improvviso la senape e il pepe come fecero col malto e col luppolo, con l’assurdo pretesto che il sale e la senape siano tanto superflui quanto la musica. Ma pur resistendo al suggerimento che dobbiamo mangiare il manzo senza senape, riconosco che c’è ora un pericolo assai più profondo e più sottile, che gli uomini possano voler mangiare la senape senza il manzo. Voglio dire che possano perdere l’appetito; l’appetito per il manzo, il pane e il formaggio e la piena luce del giorno della vita; e dipendere interamente da spezie e condimenti. Sono persino stato biasimato per aver difeso le spezie della vita contro quella che veniva chiamata la Vita Semplice. Sono stato biasimato per essermi fatto campione della birra e dei birilli. Per fortuna, se ero un campione dei birilli, non ci fu mai alcun pericolo che io fossi un campione ai birilli. Ma ho giocato a giochi ordinari come i birilli, sempre male; eppure tutte le persone sane converranno che non si gode mai di un gioco finché non si gode di essere battuti al gioco. Ho persino giocato a golf in Scozia prima che Arthur Balfour lo portasse in Inghilterra e diventasse una moda e poi una religione. Da allora sono stato inibito da una difficoltà nel considerare un gioco come una religione, e l’orrendo segreto del mio fallimento è che non riuscii mai a vedere del tutto la differenza tra il cricket e il golf, come li giocavo da ragazzo, e il gatto-nell’angolo e i vasi-di-miele, come li giocavo quando ero bambino. Forse quei giochi da nursery sono ormai dimenticati; ad ogni modo, non rivelerò che bei giochi fossero, per timore che diventino di moda. Se una volta venissero presi sul serio in quel mondo tanto serio, il mondo dello Sport, ne seguirebbero enormi conseguenze. I negozi venderanno una Pantofola speciale per l’Acchiappa-la-Pantofola, oppure un caddy seguirà il giocatore con una sacca piena di quindici pantofole diverse. I vasi-di-miele diventeranno vasi-di-denaro; e ci sarà una speculazione «all’angolo» nel gatto-nell’angolo.
Anyhow, I have enjoyed like everybody else those sports and spices of life. But I am more and more convinced that neither in your special spices nor in mine, neither in honey-pots nor quart-pots, neither in mustard nor in music, nor in any other distraction from life, is the secret we are all seeking, the secret of enjoying life. I am perfectly certain that all our world will end in despair, unless there is some way of making the mind itself, the ordinary thought we have at ordinary times, more healthy and more happy than they seem to be just now, to judge by most modern novels and poems. You have to be happy in those quiet moments when you remember that you are alive; not in those noisy moments when you forget. Unless we can learn again to enjoy life, we shall not long enjoy the spices of life. I once read a French fairy-tale that expressed exactly what I mean. Never believe that French wit is shallow; it is the shining surface of French irony, which is unfathomable. It was about a pessimist poet who decided to drown himself; and as he went down to the river, he gave away his eyes to a blind man, his ears to a deaf man, his legs to a lame man, and so on, up to the moment when the reader was waiting for the splash of his suicide; but the author wrote that this senseless trunk settled itself on the shore and began to experience the joy of living: la joie de vivre. The joy of being alive. You have to go deep, and perhaps to grow old, to know how true that story is.
If I were to ask myself where and when I have been happiest, I could of course give the obvious answers, as true of me as of everybody else; at some dance or feast of the romantic time of life; at some juvenile triumph of debate; at some sight of beautiful things in strange lands. But it is much more important to remember that I have been intensely and imaginatively happy in the queerest because the quietest places. I have been filled with life from within in a cold waiting-room in a deserted railway junction. I have been completely alive sitting on an iron seat under an ugly lamp-post at a third-rate watering place. In short, I have experienced the mere excitement of existence in places that would commonly be called as dull as ditch-water. And by the way, is ditch-water dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun. Even that proverbial phrase will prove that we cannot always trust what is proverbial, when it professes to describe what is prosaic. I doubt whether the fifteen gushing fountains to be found in your ornamental garden contain creatures so amusing as those the miscroscope reveals; like the profiles of politicians in caricature. And that is only one example out of a thousand, of the things in daily life we call dull that are not really so dull after all. And I am confident that there is no future for the modern world, unless it can understand that it has not merely to seek what is more and more exciting, but rather the yet more exciting business of discovering the excitement in things that are called dull.
What we have to teach the young man of the future, is how to enjoy himself. Until he can enjoy himself, he will grow more and more tired of enjoying everything else. What we have to teach him is to amuse himself. At this moment he is more and more dependent upon anything which he thinks will amuse him. And, to judge by the expression of his face, it does not amuse him very much. When we consider what he receives, it is indeed a most magnificent wonder and wealth and concentration of amusement. He can travel in a racing-car almost as quick as a cannon-ball; and still have his car fitted up with wireless from all the ends of the earth. He can get Vienna and Moscow; he can hear Cairo and Warsaw; and if he cannot see England, through which he happens to be travelling, that is after all a small matter. In a century, no doubt, his car will travel like a comet, and his wireless will hear the noises in the moon. But all this does not help him when the car stops; and he has to stand stamping about in a line, with nothing to think about. All this does not help him even when the wireless stops and he has to sit still in a silent car with nothing to talk about. If you consider what are the things poured into him, what are the things he receives, then indeed they are colossal cataracts of things, cosmic Niagaras that have never before poured into any human being are pouring into him. But if you consider what comes out of him, as a result of all this absorption, the result we have to record is rather serious. In the vast majority of cases, nothing. Not even conversation, as it used to be. He does not conduct long arguments, as young men did when I was young. The first and startling effect of all this noise is silence. Second, when he does have the itch to write or say something, it is always an itch in the sense of an irritation.
Everything has its better and baser form; and there is irritation and irritation. There is a great deal of difference between the irritation of Aldous Huxley and the irritation of some nasty little degenerate in a novel by Aldous Huxley. But honestly I do not think I am unfair to the whole trend of the time, if I say that it is intellectually irritated; and therefore without that sort of rich repose in the mind which I mean, when I say that a man when he is alone can be happy because he is alive. For instance, a man of genius of the same generation, for whom I have a very special admiration, is Mr. T. S. Eliot. But nobody will deny that there was a sense in which, originally, even his inspiration was irritation. He began with pure pessimism; he has since found much finer and more subtle things; but I hardly think he has found repose. And it is just here that I will have the effrontery to distinguish between his generation and mine. It used to be thought impudent for a boy to criticize an old gentleman, it now requires far more sublime impudence for an older man to criticize a younger. Yet I will defend my own idea of the spiritual spice of life against even the spirituality that finds this ordinary life entirely without spice. I know very well that Mr. Eliot described the desolation he found more than the desolation he felt. But I think that ‘The Waste Land’ was at least a world in which he had wandered. And as I am describing the recent world, I may as well describe it as he has described it, in ‘The Hollow Men’—though nobody would describe him as a hollow man. This is the impression of many impressions.
Comunque sia, ho goduto come tutti gli altri di quegli svaghi e di quei condimenti della vita. Ma sono sempre più convinto che né nei vostri condimenti particolari né nei miei, né nei vasetti di miele né nei boccali di birra, né nella senape né nella musica, né in alcun altro diversivo dalla vita, si trovi il segreto che tutti andiamo cercando, il segreto di godere la vita. Sono perfettamente certo che tutto il nostro mondo finirà nella disperazione, a meno che non vi sia qualche modo di rendere la mente stessa, il pensiero ordinario che abbiamo nei momenti ordinari, più sana e più felice di quanto essa sembri esserlo proprio adesso, a giudicare dalla maggior parte dei romanzi e delle poesie moderne. Bisogna essere felici in quei momenti quieti in cui ci si ricorda di essere vivi; non in quei momenti chiassosi in cui lo si dimentica. Se non impareremo di nuovo a godere la vita, non godremo a lungo dei condimenti della vita. Un tempo lessi una fiaba francese che esprimeva esattamente ciò che intendo. Non credete mai che lo spirito francese sia superficiale; esso è la lucente superficie dell’ironia francese, che è insondabile. Parlava di un poeta pessimista che aveva deciso di annegarsi; e mentre scendeva verso il fiume, donava i suoi occhi a un cieco, le sue orecchie a un sordo, le sue gambe a uno storpio, e così via, fino al momento in cui il lettore aspettava il tonfo del suo suicidio; ma l’autore scrisse che quel tronco insensato si accomodò sulla riva e cominciò a sperimentare la gioia di vivere: la joie de vivre. La gioia di essere vivi. Bisogna andare in profondità, e forse invecchiare, per sapere quanto sia vera quella storia.
Se dovessi domandare a me stesso dove e quando sono stato più felice, potrei naturalmente dare le risposte ovvie, vere per me come per chiunque altro; a qualche ballo o festa dell’età romantica della vita; a qualche giovanile trionfo nel dibattito; alla vista di qualche cosa bella in terre straniere. Ma è molto più importante ricordare che sono stato intensamente e fantasiosamente felice nei luoghi più strani proprio perché più quieti. Sono stato colmato di vita dall’interno in una fredda sala d’attesa di un deserto nodo ferroviario. Sono stato completamente vivo seduto su una panca di ferro sotto un brutto lampione in una stazione balneare di terz’ordine. In breve, ho provato la pura eccitazione dell’esistenza in luoghi che comunemente sarebbero detti insipidi come l’acqua di fosso. E, a proposito, è poi insipida l’acqua di fosso? I naturalisti coi microscopi mi hanno detto che essa brulica di quieto spasso. Persino quella frase proverbiale proverà che non possiamo sempre fidarci di ciò che è proverbiale, quando pretende di descrivere ciò che è prosaico. Dubito che le quindici fontane zampillanti che si trovano nel vostro giardino ornamentale contengano creature così divertenti come quelle che il microscopio rivela; simili ai profili dei politici nella caricatura. E questo è soltanto un esempio fra mille, delle cose che nella vita quotidiana chiamiamo insipide e che poi non sono affatto così insipide. E sono certo che non vi è alcun futuro per il mondo moderno, a meno che esso non sappia comprendere che non ha soltanto da cercare ciò che è sempre più eccitante, ma piuttosto l’impresa ancora più eccitante di scoprire l’eccitazione nelle cose che sono chiamate insipide.
Ciò che dobbiamo insegnare al giovane del futuro è come divertirsi da sé. Finché non saprà divertirsi da sé, si stancherà sempre più di divertirsi con ogni altra cosa. Ciò che dobbiamo insegnargli è a spassarsela da sé. In questo momento egli dipende sempre più da qualunque cosa creda possa spassarlo. E, a giudicare dall’espressione del suo volto, essa non lo spassa granché. Se consideriamo ciò che egli riceve, si tratta invero della più magnifica meraviglia e ricchezza e concentrazione di svago. Egli può viaggiare in un’automobile da corsa quasi veloce come una palla di cannone; e avere per giunta la sua vettura attrezzata con la radio da tutti i capi della terra. Può prendere Vienna e Mosca; può udire il Cairo e Varsavia; e se non riesce a vedere l’Inghilterra, che si dà il caso stia attraversando, questa è dopo tutto una cosa da poco. Fra un secolo, senza dubbio, la sua vettura viaggerà come una cometa, e la sua radio udirà i rumori nella luna. Ma tutto ciò non lo aiuta quando l’automobile si ferma; ed egli deve starsene lì a pestare i piedi in una fila, senza nulla a cui pensare. Tutto ciò non lo aiuta nemmeno quando la radio si ferma ed egli deve starsene immobile in una vettura silenziosa senza nulla di cui parlare. Se consideri quali siano le cose riversate in lui, quali siano le cose che egli riceve, allora invero esse sono colossali cateratte di cose, cosmiche Niagara che mai prima d’ora si erano riversate in alcun essere umano si riversano in lui. Ma se consideri ciò che esce da lui, quale risultato di tutto questo assorbimento, il risultato che dobbiamo registrare è piuttosto serio. Nella stragrande maggioranza dei casi, nulla. Nemmeno la conversazione, come una volta si usava. Egli non conduce lunghe discussioni, come facevano i giovani quando io ero giovane. Il primo e sorprendente effetto di tutto questo frastuono è il silenzio. In secondo luogo, quando gli viene il prurito di scrivere o di dire qualcosa, si tratta sempre di un prurito nel senso di un’irritazione.
Ogni cosa ha la sua forma migliore e la sua più vile; e vi è irritazione e irritazione. Vi è una gran differenza fra l’irritazione di Aldous Huxley e l’irritazione di qualche sordido piccolo degenerato in un romanzo di Aldous Huxley. Ma onestamente non credo di essere ingiusto verso l’intera tendenza del tempo, se dico che essa è intellettualmente irritata; e perciò priva di quella sorta di ricco riposo nella mente che io intendo, quando dico che un uomo, quando è solo, può essere felice perché è vivo. Per esempio, un uomo di genio della stessa generazione, per il quale nutro una assai speciale ammirazione, è il signor T. S. Eliot. Ma nessuno negherà che vi fu un senso in cui, in origine, persino la sua ispirazione era irritazione. Egli cominciò con un puro pessimismo; da allora ha trovato cose ben più raffinate e più sottili; ma non credo affatto che egli abbia trovato il riposo. Ed è proprio qui che avrò la sfrontatezza di distinguere fra la sua generazione e la mia. Un tempo si riteneva impudente che un ragazzo criticasse un vecchio signore, ora occorre una impudenza ben più sublime perché un uomo più anziano critichi uno più giovane. Eppure difenderò la mia propria idea del sale spirituale della vita persino contro quella spiritualità che trova questa vita ordinaria del tutto priva di sale. So benissimo che il signor Eliot descrisse la desolazione che trovava più della desolazione che sentiva. Ma penso che «The Waste Land» fosse almeno un mondo in cui egli aveva errato. E poiché sto descrivendo il mondo recente, tanto vale che io lo descriva come lo ha descritto lui, in «The Hollow Men» — sebbene nessuno descriverebbe lui come un uomo vuoto. Questa è l’impressione di molte impressioni.
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
Now forgive me if I say, in my old-world fashion, that I’m damned if I ever felt like that. I recognize the great realities Mr. Eliot has revealed; but I do not admit that this is the deepest reality. I am ready to admit that our generation made too much of romance and comfort, but even when I was uncomfortable I was more comfortable than that. I was more comfortable on the iron seat. I was more happy in the cold waiting-room. I knew the world was perishable and would end, but I did not think it would end with a whimper, but if anything with a trump of doom. It is doubtless a grotesque spectacle that the great-grandfathers should still be dancing with indecent gaiety, when the young are so grave and sad; but in this matter of the spice of life, I will defend the spiritual appetite of my own age. I will even be so indecently frivolous as to break into song, and say to the young pessimists:
Some sneer; some snigger; some simper; In the youth where we laughed and sang, And they may end with a whimper But we will end with a bang.
ON FRAGMENTS
As I have said before I am a believer in staring blankly at things; if you do it something always happens. For instance, I am staring blankly at this sheet of paper and I firmly believe that something more or less intelligible will happen soon. Men stared at the blank blue sky and invented a million mythologies. Staring stupidly at live people is more dangerous; but even this has its fascination; and if you ever see your companion’s face turned towards you with the rounded and complete expression of a congenital idiot, you may be certain again that he is nearer at that moment than at any other to knowing what you really are; which I fancy is the last thing that you desire. When we cast ‘an intelligent look’ (as they say in books) at a thing, it only means that we stamp our own significance upon it. When we look wisely at a post we see what we mean by a post. But when we look stupidly at a post we see what a post means.
In such a trance of divine imbecility I remember once staring at the paving-stones under my feet, until I went off into a sort of dream of paving-stones. They passed perpetually under my feet like flat and silent waves of stones, and all the time I was asking myself what they were. Street after street I passed, looking at the ground like a cow. And then it suddenly seemed to me that they were all gravestones; the gravestones of innumerable and utterly forgotten men. For under every one of them, almost certainly, there was human dust. I seemed to see fantastic epitaphs on them, commemorating the deeds of heroes who are too old and too great to be remembered. There, for instance, was the man who found fire and the man who made the first wheel; men too necessary to be ever named. There were the dim poets who gave names to the flowers, and have utterly lost their own.
And among those imaginary benefactors in all ages I seemed to see one class especially predominant. I mean the people who in the dim beginning of time united one thing artificially, but permanently, with another. What primeval priest, for instance, married bread and cheese? Who was the wild visionary (of later times) who, after ransacking all the forests, and counting all the fruits of the earth, discovered that almonds and raisins had been looking for each other since the world began? Who, above all, discovered such a thing as the happy marriage between music and literature? The men who are least known from the past are certainly the men who made this combination. And the men who are best known at the present day are certainly those who are tearing such combinations in pieces.
This is the worst element in our anarchic world of today. The whole is one vast system of separation—an enormous philosophical Divorce Court. The theory of art for art’s sake, for instance, as applied to painting, was a proposal to separate a picture from the subject of the picture. Sentiment would be better without art, art would be better without sentiment. In other words, a picture would be a better picture if it were not a picture of anything. And a subject would be all the better subject if you did not paint it. Such moderns easily might, I think some moderns really have, applied the same principle to that ancient combination called a song. A very modern poet might easily say that the words would convey their own natural rhythms much better without a tune. A very modern musician might easily say that the only perfectly musical songs would be songs without words. No one has yet had the star-defying audacity to hint at a separation between bread and cheese. But we must be prepared to have it said before long by some profligate aesthete that bread would be more breadish without cheese, and that cheese would be more exquisitely and penetratingly cheesy without bread. We must be prepared, I say, for a perpetual tendency towards such cleavages; and we must be prepared to answer them by insisting on the immemorial right of mankind to perpetuate such alliances. Man has from the beginning joined spoken words to an air, and the two have grown old and wise together. Those whom man hath joined let no man sunder.
This endless process of separation of everything from everything else has a good example, for instance, in the case of religion. Religion, a human and historic religion, like Christianity or Buddhism or some great periods of Paganism was, as a matter of fact, a combination of all the important parts of life. Every one of the main human interests was in old times made a part of the creed. Every one of those human interests is now put apart by itself, as if it were a monomania like collecting stamps. A religion, as understood by humanity in the past, always consisted at least of the following elements. First, of a theory of ultimate truth and of the nature of the universe. That is now put by itself and called Metaphysics. Second, of a groping communication with some being other than man. This is now put by itself and called Psychical Research. Third, of a strict rule of behaviour, with many irritating vetoes. This is now put by itself and called Ethics. Fourth, of a certain flamboyant tendency to break out into colours and symbols, to do wild and beautiful things with flowers or with garments or with fire. This is now put by itself and called Art. Fifth, of a tendency to feel that matter and locality can be sacred, that certain soils or features of the landscape can be a part of the peace of the soul. This is now put by itself and called Patriotism. And the typically modern men are mainly proud of having thus torn up the original unity of the religious idea. Ethics for ethics’ sake, and art for art’s sake are like the tatters of what was once the seamless robe. They have parted his garments among them, and for his vesture they have cast lots.
Questo è il modo in cui il mondo finisce Questo è il modo in cui il mondo finisce Questo è il modo in cui il mondo finisce Non con uno schianto ma con un gemito.
Ora perdonatemi se dico, alla mia maniera d’altri tempi, che sia dannato se mai ho provato qualcosa di simile. Riconosco le grandi realtà che il signor Eliot ha rivelato; ma non ammetto che questa sia la realtà più profonda. Sono pronto ad ammettere che la nostra generazione fece troppo caso al romanticismo e all’agio, ma persino quando ero a disagio ero più a mio agio di così. Ero più a mio agio sul sedile di ferro. Ero più felice nella fredda sala d’aspetto. Sapevo che il mondo era perituro e sarebbe finito, ma non pensavo che sarebbe finito con un gemito, semmai con una tromba del giudizio. È senza dubbio uno spettacolo grottesco che i bisnonni continuino a danzare con sconveniente allegria, mentre i giovani sono così gravi e tristi; ma in questa faccenda del sale della vita, io difenderò l’appetito spirituale della mia età. Sarò perfino tanto sconvenientemente frivolo da prorompere in canto, e dire ai giovani pessimisti:
Chi sogghigna; chi ridacchia; chi smorfia; Nella giovinezza in cui ridevamo e cantavamo, E loro potranno finire con un gemito Ma noi finiremo con uno schianto.
SUI FRAMMENTI
Come ho già detto, sono un credente nel fissare le cose con sguardo vuoto; se lo fai, qualcosa accade sempre. Per esempio, sto fissando con sguardo vuoto questo foglio di carta e credo fermamente che qualcosa di più o meno intelligibile accadrà presto. Gli uomini fissarono il cielo azzurro e vuoto e inventarono un milione di mitologie. Fissare stupidamente le persone vive è più pericoloso; ma anche questo ha il suo fascino; e se mai vedete il volto del vostro compagno volto verso di voi con l’espressione tonda e compiuta di un idiota congenito, potete essere certi ancora una volta che egli è in quel momento più vicino che in ogni altro a sapere ciò che realmente siete; il che immagino sia l’ultima cosa che desiderate. Quando gettiamo ‘uno sguardo intelligente’ (come dicono i libri) su una cosa, ciò significa soltanto che vi imprimiamo il nostro proprio significato. Quando guardiamo con saggezza un palo, vediamo ciò che noi intendiamo per palo. Ma quando guardiamo stupidamente un palo, vediamo ciò che un palo significa.
In una simile estasi di divina imbecillità ricordo di aver fissato una volta le pietre del selciato sotto i miei piedi, finché caddi in una sorta di sogno di pietre del selciato. Passavano perpetuamente sotto i miei piedi come onde piatte e silenziose di pietre, e per tutto il tempo mi chiedevo che cosa fossero. Strada dopo strada procedevo, guardando il suolo come una mucca. E poi all’improvviso mi parve che fossero tutte lapidi; le lapidi di innumerevoli e del tutto dimenticati uomini. Poiché sotto ciascuna di esse, quasi certamente, c’era polvere umana. Mi sembrava di vedervi fantastici epitaffi, che commemoravano le imprese di eroi troppo antichi e troppo grandi per essere ricordati. Vi era, per esempio, l’uomo che scoprì il fuoco e l’uomo che fece la prima ruota; uomini troppo necessari per essere mai nominati. Vi erano gli oscuri poeti che diedero i nomi ai fiori, e hanno del tutto perduto il proprio.
E fra quegli immaginari benefattori di tutte le età mi pareva di vederne una classe particolarmente predominante. Intendo le persone che nell’oscuro principio del tempo unirono una cosa a un’altra artificialmente, ma per sempre. Quale sacerdote primevo, per esempio, sposò pane e formaggio? Chi fu il selvaggio visionario (di tempi più tardi) che, dopo aver frugato tutte le foreste, e contato tutti i frutti della terra, scoprì che mandorle e uva passa si cercavano l’un l’altra dal principio del mondo? Chi, soprattutto, scoprì una cosa come il felice matrimonio fra musica e letteratura? Gli uomini meno conosciuti del passato sono certamente gli uomini che fecero questa combinazione. E gli uomini più conosciuti al giorno d’oggi sono certamente quelli che stanno facendo a pezzi tali combinazioni.
Questo è l’elemento peggiore del nostro mondo anarchico di oggi. L’insieme è un unico vasto sistema di separazione—un enorme Divorzio filosofico portato in Tribunale. La teoria dell’arte per l’arte, per esempio, applicata alla pittura, era una proposta di separare un quadro dal soggetto del quadro. Il sentimento sarebbe migliore senza l’arte, l’arte sarebbe migliore senza il sentimento. In altre parole, un quadro sarebbe un quadro migliore se non fosse il quadro di nulla. E un soggetto sarebbe un soggetto tanto migliore se non lo si dipingesse. Tali moderni facilmente potrebbero, e alcuni moderni credo davvero abbiano, applicato lo stesso principio a quell’antica combinazione chiamata canzone. Un poeta modernissimo potrebbe facilmente dire che le parole trasmetterebbero i propri ritmi naturali assai meglio senza una melodia. Un modernissimo musicista potrebbe facilmente dire che le uniche canzoni perfettamente musicali sarebbero canzoni senza parole. Nessuno ha ancora avuto l’audacia sfidante le stelle di accennare a una separazione fra pane e formaggio. Ma dobbiamo essere preparati a sentir dire fra non molto da qualche dissoluto esteta che il pane sarebbe più panoso senza il formaggio, e che il formaggio sarebbe più squisitamente e penetrantemente formaggioso senza il pane. Dobbiamo essere preparati, dico, a una perpetua tendenza verso simili scissioni; e dobbiamo essere preparati a rispondere ad esse insistendo sul diritto immemorabile dell’umanità di perpetuare tali alleanze. L’uomo ha fin dal principio unito le parole pronunciate a un’aria, e le due sono invecchiate e diventate sagge insieme. Ciò che l’uomo ha congiunto nessun uomo lo separi.
Questo infinito processo di separazione di ogni cosa da ogni altra cosa ha un buon esempio, per esempio, nel caso della religione. La religione, una religione umana e storica, come il Cristianesimo o il Buddismo o certi grandi periodi del Paganesimo era, in verità, una combinazione di tutte le parti importanti della vita. Ognuno dei principali interessi umani era anticamente reso una parte del credo. Ognuno di quegli interessi umani è ora messo da parte per sé, come se fosse una monomania al pari del collezionare francobolli. Una religione, come intesa dall’umanità nel passato, consisteva sempre almeno dei seguenti elementi. Primo, di una teoria della verità ultima e della natura dell’universo. Questa è ora messa da sé e chiamata Metafisica. Secondo, di una brancolante comunicazione con qualche essere diverso dall’uomo. Questa è ora messa da sé e chiamata Ricerca Psichica. Terzo, di una rigida regola di condotta, con molti irritanti divieti. Questa è ora messa da sé e chiamata Etica. Quarto, di una certa sgargiante tendenza a prorompere in colori e simboli, a fare cose selvagge e belle con i fiori o con le vesti o con il fuoco. Questa è ora messa da sé e chiamata Arte. Quinto, di una tendenza a sentire che la materia e il luogo possono essere sacri, che certi suoli o tratti del paesaggio possono essere parte della pace dell’anima. Questa è ora messa da sé e chiamata Patriottismo. E gli uomini tipicamente moderni vanno soprattutto fieri di aver così lacerato l’originaria unità dell’idea religiosa. L’etica per l’etica, e l’arte per l’arte sono come i brandelli di ciò che un tempo era la veste senza cuciture. Si sono divise le sue vesti fra loro, e per la sua tunica hanno tirato a sorte.
THE SPICE OF LIFE
by
G. K. Chesterton
On the Essay An extract from the last paragraph of an introductory essay to Essays of the Year 1931-32. Published by The Argonaut Press, 1932
ESSAYS ON LITERATURE IN GENERAL
Sentimental Literature The Speaker, July 27,1901
How to Write a Detective G. K’s Weekly, October 17,
Story
Humour Encyclopaedia Britannica. Written May 1928
Fiction as Food Composite essay. I “Fiction as Food” from The Lending Library and Book Borrower’s Record, Nov., 1934.
II “Novel-Reading”,
T. P’s Weekly, April 7, 1911
The Soul in Every Legend New Witness, July 15, 1921
ON PARTICULAR BOOKS AND WRITERS
The Macbeths Date unknown. First published
John o’ London’s Weekly, Jan. 5 1951
The Tragedy of King Lear Introduction to an illustrated edition of King Lear published by David Magee, San Francisco, 1950— Illustrated by Yunge
The Everlasting Nights Daily News, November 7, 1901
Aesop’s Fables Introduction to a limited edition of Aesop’s Fables published by William Heinemann, London and Doubleday Page & Co., New York, 1912. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham
Both Sides of the Looking—The Listener, November 29. 1933
Glass
And So to Bed G. K’s Weekly, January 23, 1936
As Large as Life in Dickens Daily News, February 8. 1902
Disputes on Dickens The Academy. Date unknown.
Charlotte Bronte as a Contributed to a Centenary
Romantic Memorial Volume prepared by the Bronte Society. Published by T. Fisher Unwin, 1917
THOUGHT AND BELIEF
Anti-Religious Thought in Contributed to An Outline of the Eighteenth Century Christianity; the Story of our Civilization. Vol. IV. Christianity and Modern Thought, 1926. The Waverley Book Co., London
The Camp and the New Witness, September 22,
The Religious Aspect of Signed essay. Date and origin
Westminster Abbey unknown
The Religious Aim of The Torchbearer, 1925 Education
The Philosophy of Islands The Venture Annual, 1903
AT HOME AND ABROAD
On Holidays New Witness, May 21, 1914
The Peasant Daily News, July 8, 1911
The Lost Railway Station New Witness, October 24, 1919
Bethlehem and the Great New Witness, December 8, 1922
Cities
The Sacredness of Sites Illustrated London News, January 11, 1930
Scipio and the Children G. K’s Weekly, May 30, 1935
The Real Issue G. K’s Weekly, June 5, 1926
THE SPICE OF LIFE
The Comic Constable Daily News, April 2, 1910
Capone’s Pal New York American, July 12, 1935
On Losing One’s Head The Odd Volume Annual, 1910
The Spice of Life The Listener, March 18, 1936
On Fragments Daily News, March 31, 1906
** This is the text of a broadcast talk given by G. K. Chesterton for the British Broadcasting Corporation in their series THE SPICE OF LIFE.
THE SPICE OF LIFE
by
G. K. Chesterton
Sul Saggio Un estratto dall’ultimo paragrafo di un saggio introduttivo agli Essays of the Year 1931-32. Pubblicato da The Argonaut Press, 1932
SAGGI SULLA LETTERATURA IN GENERALE
Letteratura sentimentale The Speaker, 27 luglio 1901
Come scrivere un Poliziesco G. K’s Weekly, 17 ottobre,
Racconto
Umorismo Encyclopaedia Britannica. Scritto maggio 1928
La narrativa come cibo Saggio composito. I “Fiction as Food” da The Lending Library and Book Borrower’s Record, nov. 1934.
II “Leggere il Romanzo”,
T. P’s Weekly, 7 aprile 1911
L’Anima in ogni leggenda New Witness, 15 luglio 1921
SU LIBRI E SCRITTORI PARTICOLARI
I Macbeth Data ignota. Prima pubblicazione
John o’ London’s Weekly, 5 gen. 1951
La Tragedia di Re Lear Introduzione a un’edizione illustrata di Re Lear pubblicata da David Magee, San Francisco, 1950— Illustrata da Yunge
Le notti eterne Daily News, 7 novembre 1901
Le favole di Esopo Introduzione a un’edizione limitata delle favole di Esopo pubblicata da William Heinemann, London e Doubleday Page & Co., New York, 1912. Illustrata da Arthur Rackham
Entrambi i lati dello Specchio—The Listener, 29 novembre 1933
Deformante
E così a letto G. K’s Weekly, 23 gennaio 1936
Grande al naturale in Dickens Daily News, 8 febbraio 1902
Dispute su Dickens The Academy. Data ignota.
Charlotte Bronte come Contributo a un volume commemorativo
Romantica del centenario preparato dalla Bronte Society. Pubblicato da T. Fisher Unwin, 1917
PENSIERO E FEDE
Il pensiero antireligioso nel Contributo a An Outline of Settecento Cristianesimo; the Story of our Civilization. Vol. IV. Cristianesimo and Modern Thought, 1926. The Waverley Book Co., London
L’accampamento e la New Witness, 22 settembre,
L’aspetto religioso di Saggio firmato. Data e origine
Westminster Abbey ignote
Il fine religioso dell’ The Torchbearer, 1925 Educazione
La Filosofia delle isole The Venture Annual, 1903
IN PATRIA E ALL’ESTERO
Sulle vacanze New Witness, 21 maggio 1914
Il contadino Daily News, 8 luglio 1911
La stazione ferroviaria perduta New Witness, 24 ottobre 1919
Betlemme e le grandi New Witness, 8 dicembre 1922
Città
La sacralità dei luoghi Illustrated London News, 11 gennaio 1930
Scipione e i bambini G. K’s Weekly, 30 maggio 1935
La vera questione G. K’s Weekly, 5 giugno 1926
THE SPICE OF LIFE
Il poliziotto comico Daily News, 2 aprile 1910
L’amico di Capone New York American, 12 luglio 1935
Sul perdere la testa The Odd Volume Annual, 1910
Il sale della vita The Listener, 18 marzo 1936
Sui frammenti Daily News, 31 marzo 1906
** Questo è il testo di una conversazione radiofonica tenuta da G. K. Chesterton per la British Broadcasting Corporation nella loro serie THE SPICE OF LIFE.