Books & Writers 59

The Extremists of Al Alvarez Suicide, Chaos, Violence—By GEOFFREY GRIGSON

1 CANNOT find much in The Savage God which kitchen. She was still warm"—and in her coffin— I makes it worth prolonged consideration. Mr "She lay stiffly, a ludicrous ruff at her neck. Only Alvarez states that he has written a "study of her face showed. It was grey and slightly trans- suicide." His publishers state that he has tried to parent, like wax." (all of which would have been discover why people commit suicide. But I detect in the Sunday paper as well had the —and for this I do not require to be much of a poet's husband not protested). Maigret—two authors in the same Alvarez, as The book, accordingly, begins by mixing sen- here exhibited; and two books. They are not sationalism and concern, which it continues to do easily separable. in other respects, until the reader requires a One Alvarez ("who was educated at Oundle separator to divide the two, or to divide Alvarez School, and Corpus Christi College, , from Alvarez. He may remember, as he turns the where he obtained a first-class degree in English") handle, after adjusting the disparate buckets or has exploratory concerns or prime interests of a the bowl and the bucket, that this critic has writ- literary-sociological kind which centre upon a ten of his indifference to the palpability around quartet of contemporary poets and a postulated him; and if he should have looked ahead from the style he calls Extremism shaped by the internal prologue to the epilogue, the reader may also be features of the present casting-mould, the present remembering that Mr Alvarez confesses himself "situation." His poets, "the four leading English- to be "a failed suicide", a fact which gives him a language exponents of the style," are, as we know special personal investment, we may suppose, in perhaps too well, the three Americans Robert his notions of external and internal violence, and Lowell, and , and Extremism. Sylvia Plath's husband and relict, . His notions? When the last fluid ounce has The other Alvarez is the bookman, the pro- passed through the machine, much of the rather moter and journaliser of his interests or concerns; small bowl of resultant cream will be found to be and if a book is to be made—the journalist or tinned rather than fresh, after all; to be an altered journaliser taking over—it is likely that more and I would say debased borrowing from Camus readers will be attracted by the "situation" than on the Absurd and death and suicide, and man in by a close consideration of the favoured poets or revolt, and creating dangerously. their poems; and still more, if the "situation" can be subsumed and proffered in one of its morbidly HERE THEN IS THE SCHEME of the book: in that fascinating elements. prologue, Sylvia Plath, who must be shown to The lead therefore is given to suicide. But con- have been rather less a pathological suicide than veniently one of the favoured poets can share the a bold explorer of the purlieus of death into lead, since she obligingly wrote about suicide, which she was tempted, always in ultimate con- and even committed it, and since her story has trol, always taking an explorer's risk which at last become the object of a cult ("Anything by or (in that London house where Yeats had once about Sylvia Plath goes down well on these lived) proved to be too great—Sylvia Plath sensationalised beyond the business either of his heights"—report from Hampstead in The Book- readers or Mr Alvarez. Next, filling the greater seller, 25 December 1971, on "Christmas in the part of The Savage God, a survey of conceptions Bookshops"). Mr Alvarez, who has so pushed and misconceptions of suicide and of the ways in and so over-valued the poems of Sylvia Plath, can which suicide has impressed itself on the thought say in his prologue that they are now classics, that and feeling and judgment of writers from Dante he and none other introduced them to a Sunday onwards (these are surveys of an averagely acute paper, that he himself knew the poet, in life; and but secondary amateurism such as one might find in death, on the kitchen floor—"The builders in the lighter pages of New Society). Finally, an forced the lock and found Sylvia sprawled in the exposition in more detail of the Extremism of Mr Alvarez, which is the controlled exploration, 1 The Savage God: A Study of Suicide. By A. ALVA- through art, of "the nihilism and destractiveness REZ. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £3.25, New of the self", reflecting accurately "the nihilism of York: Random House, $7.95.

PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 60 Books & Writers our own violent societies." The "best modern General: artists" survive, if they avoid killing themselves, as "suicides of the imagination: they are scape- goats on our behalf," each "finds himself in testing out his own death and vulnerability"; and THE IMPERIAL the modern art "forces its audience to recognise and accept, in their nerve-ends, not the facts of ANIMAL life but the facts of death and violence; absurd, random, gratuitous, unjustified and inescapably Lionel Tiger & Robin Fox part of the society we have created." "Two young scholars, dramatic- "Not the facts of life": Mr Alvarez signs off ally named Tiger & Fox, have (though still to come is his little ingratiating been revolutionising the study of epilogue on how he failed to manage his own human behaviour"- suicide) by quoting Camus in his remark "There Encounter is only one liberty, to come to terms with death. After which, everything is possible." This is neat. "Explodes a bomb of sanity and It will be remembered, however, that Camus, who reason This should be the first rejected suicide (and murder), declared, "But the book to convince the point is to live", in our situation of the Absurd. unconvincible concerning the Camus didn't stop with the nihilism or with the animal nature of man and liberty, he went on to what the liberty makes society"—Robert Ardrey. possible and essential. For example: "Happiness £2.50 and the absurd are the two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable." Or: "We must simultaneously serve suffering and beauty." In the heartening light of Camus, of L'Homme THE Rivolti and Le My the de Sisyphe, this journalising author of The Savage God seems to me to be TUPAMAROS indulging in the violence and the chaos: he offers a bucket mainly of skim-milk which is black and by Maria Esther Gilio poisonous—and no wonder with the obscene The first book about the carrion-Crow of the fancy of Ted Hughes per- Tupamaros Guerrillas of Uruguay. ched on the rim. From the first page the writing £2.75 cloth; £1.40 paperback accords; it is vulgar and execrable, half assertive, half ingratiating, if fluent. We sat out in the big wild garden while little Frieda, Fiction: now aged two, teetered among the flowers. The writing proceeds by flaccid cliche, by the language of the blind and deaf who cannot be Melvyn Bragg affected by our surrounding reality; an assort- JOSH LAWTON ment of "worlds apart", "genius", "sheer ability", "success story", "genuine article", et cetera, £1.95 which makes one call Camus back once more, asking "If we are not artists in our language first of all, what kind of artists are we?", and which John Hopkins deprives such estimations as it may deliver of TANGIER BUZZLESS authority or plausibility. In any case I distrust a critic who analyses a FLIES Zeitgeist more eagerly than he attends to a line £2.50 or a cadence; whose statements are too often careless (for example, Modigliani did not kill An Alison Press Book himself, Cowper did not die in an asylum); who is so uninventive that he cannot invent his own titles (the title of this book is purloined from Seeker^ Yeats, the title of the last book by Mr Alvarez was purloined from Marianne Moore, the title Warburg of his first book from Coleridge); and who is led by the carrot of his own theory to enthuse over I art where art does not noticeably exist.

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In the World, Not of It

On Sufism—By DORIS LESSING

HAT EAST must ever be East and West must Jalaluddin Rumi was accused of publishing T be West is not a belief which is subscribed to trivial folktales in the guise of spiritual writings. by Sufis, who claim that Sufism, in its reality, not necessarily under the name, is continuously THERE WERE SOMETIMES difficulties in attacking the in operation in every culture. Sometimes invisible, Sufis, once they had established a name for it is at times offered as openly as goods in a literature, or could not be shown to be vicious. supermarket. When this happens, it is expected One such case is the frame-up of Nasimi. Unable by them that there will be hostility from those to fault Nasimi in argument, certain scholars sent academics who have made orientalism their him a pair of shoes as a gift, from another property, and sometimes from literary or other country. Into the sole they had sewn a chapter authoritarian bodies. During well over 1,000 from the Koran. Then they sent word to the years of connected literary and psychological Governor of Aleppo that Nasimi was defiling the tradition, embracing Spain, North Africa, Cen- Koran. The Governor had his shoe slit open. On tral Asia and the Middle East, they have almost the production of the paper Nasimi made no invariably clashed with narrow thinkers. Often answer to the charge, knowing that he was going the struggle between Sufis and the "establish- to be killed. He was flayed alive, reciting verses. ments" looks unpleasantly like what happened The charges are always the same. The academic when the Nazis took a stand against something. scholars persecute, claim apostasy, ignorance, Some past patterns are unfamiliar to us; others dubious parentage, desire for power over the can still be instructive, for in one form or another people, danger to public order, self-advertisement they repeat themselves. and the circulation of spurious, superficial or irresponsible literature. But in spite of these Hallaj was dismembered in Baghdad, AD 922, accusations, in spite of persecution often followed for blasphemy. The evidence against him included by judicial murder, the Sufi teachers subsequently the dread indictment that he was the grandson of a Zoroastrian, and that he was' "ignorant of the Koran became major spiritual authorities to the Islamic and its ancillary sciences of jurisprudence, tradi- world. Most of these Sufis were literary men, and tions, etc. and of poetry and Arabic philology." all were marked by their inability to accept the Searches of the houses of some of his followers dogmas of their current "establishments." Once showed that they actually possessed books inscribed in gold on Chinese paper. In case you didn't know safely dead, they could be unofficially canonised; it, this was taken to suggest that the writings must but during their lifetimes many suffered grievous- be heretical, sincex Manichees used gold ink and ly. Chinese paper... , But perhaps this treatment was not surprising: people persecute or ignore what they do not Suhrawardi was killed in 1191, the charge understand. And there was something particu- including "atheism, heresy and believing in larly provoking about the Sufis. What, for ancient philosophers." instance, could a medieval theologian make of Ibn El Arabi of Spain was hauled before an a man who called himself a mystic, was interested inquisition of scholars in the 12th century, for in man's evolution to a higher level, was associa- immodesty in pretending that love-poetry could ted with scientific work? be spiritual, when it was pornographic. It is against this sort of historical background Sarmad was executed in India in 1563 for that it can be useful to view Sufi literature, which exposing his body; he was alleged to be a Jew or exists on many levels, from simple entertainment of Jewish origin. to truths that "lie under the poet's tongue." Codes and the cryptic had their practical, as well as their spiritual, uses. 1E. G. Browne, Literary History of Persia, (1964 Oriental studies even today are the Cinderella edition). of the learned world. The reason for this is

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