Directions in Contemporary Literature CONTENTS To The Reader ix PHILO M. JR. BUCK 1. Introduction Fear 3 2. The Sacrifice for Beauty George Santayana 15 Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Wisconsin 3. A Return to Nature 37 4. The Eternal Adolescent André Gide 59 · New York 5. Futility in Masquerade Luigi Pirandello 79 6. The Waters Under the Earth Marcel Proust 101 (iii) 7. The New Eugene O'Neill 125 8. The Conscience of India (vii) 149 COPYRIGHT 1942 BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 9. Sight to the Blind Aldous Huxley 169 NEW YORK, INC. 10. Go to the Ant Jules Romains 193 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 11. The Idol of the Tribe Mein Kampf 219

12. The Marxian Formula 239 (iv) 13. Faith of Our Fathers T. S. Eliot 261 14. The Promise and Blessing 291 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A WORD must be said of appreciation to those who have aided me in this study. I would name 15. Till Hope Creates Conclusion 315 them, but they are too numerous. There are those who are associated with me in my academic A Suggested Bibliography 337 interests, and those who in one place or another have watched the genesis of the ideas that have Index (viii) 349 gone into these chapters. I must also acknowledge the aid I have received from the current translations of some of the authors, especially Mann and Proust and Sholokhov. In most of the other places the translations are my own. A word about the titles of foreign books: when the English titles are well known I have used them without giving the originals. In other places TO THE READER both are given when the books are first mentioned, and later the titles that seem most appropriate. Where there is no English translation, the original is given with a translation if one is desirable. THIS book was written during a vacation that took in most of the seven seas and all but one of I wish to acknowledge the courtesy of the following publishers for permission to the continents. To tell where the chapters were written would reveal some of the most reprint from books covered by copyright: Messrs. Henry Holt for a quotation from the poems interesting spots of the voyage, and in character the book may at first seem to resemble a of A. E. Housman; Charles Scribner's Sons for numerous passages from the works of George pilgrimage quite as varied and without plan. It covers a region of even wider scope, some of it Santayana; the Viking Press, formerly Huebsch, for passages from the plays and of almost uncharted; in reality it was and is a far more interesting voyage, and a more dangerous Gerhart Hauptmann; the Modern Library for passages from André Gide Counterfeiters; E. P. one. Dutton and Company for passages from Pirandello; Random House for passages from the In the confusion of tongues that is our contemporary literature, it is not my adventure novels of Marcel Proust; Harpers for extracts from the works of Aldous Huxley; Knopf for to pick immortals. To play the prophet and attempt to foretell whose voices will remain and passages from the novels of Jules Romains, Mikhail Sholokhov, and(v)Thomas Mann; whose already are on the way to the last silence is gratuitous folly. The danger is the greater in Harcourt, Brace and Company for parts of the poems and prose of T. S. Eliot; Houghton that we are living in an age of such swift change that a revolution every night and a new sky- Mifflin & Co. for extracts from Hitler Mein Kampf; and the Macmillan Company for passages line every morning have become almost a commonplace. How quickly a book dies that from the works of Tagore. I am exceedingly grateful for these permissions. yesterday promised to be something more than a best seller, its dust cover now its shroud. Yet some there are, there must be, that will persist and go down as the inner autobiography of our kaleidoscopic age. P. M. B. To discover these is an adventure far more interesting and profitable, for it may offer a clue to some interesting questions. Is there any pattern in our confusion of tongues? Can one Madison, Wisconsin November 1941(vi) distinguish and define some of the main tendencies in the contemporary mind? Are there expressed by some of the more typical of our writers today philosophies of life that may serve 1 as clues to and possible solutions of what some have called the 'contemporary problem'? Is it today, and a renewal, if wisdom prevail, of its sweetness and zest, and light. Losing these, and possible to group the better-known authors of today into families of (ix) ideas, and then to there are many who live in fear, what is there to which we can turn? So a number of most select the most typical of each of the families so that, understanding them, we might have the excellent authors and books, but partial pleaders and concerned with secondary issues, had clue to those that are of their kind? It was this interesting experiment that made a voyage to perforce to be overlooked. lesser known regions in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans a double adventure of The exclusion of Knut Hamson had a motive that differed only slightly, and there discovery. were many others not unlike him. Power, charm, enthusiasm, all this there is in his excellent A book like this is a gesture of bravado, a piece of academic bravura, one might say: novels, and something more that is rare in these days of our disillusionment, a belief in the as though the author had assumed the mantle of prophecy, glanced with disinterested eyes at fundamentally heroic in human nature. He is of the race of Vikings, a peasant Homer, not to be the evidence, and pronounced sentence on the ideas that are making an age. Only posterity can daunted by toil or danger, though a Norwegian friend tells me that he does not know the sea be enough disinterested to dare a judgment. There is more than a little truth in such a charge. and its part in the life of Norway. Perhaps I should have included him for the reason, The book, with the best motives in the world, is both partial and arbitrary. No other attitude is extraordinary today, that he can see life on the soil but not down on all fours, narrow in routine possible. but not narrow in humanity, sordid in its daily task but steadfast in faith and courage. Of such Even the authors selected are sometimes treated like reluctant witnesses, kept to a stuff are his heroes and heroines, universal and heroic human nature in Norwegian homespun. single issue--what have they to say that is of unique and pertinent significance to the present Yet with all his excellence Hamson does not seem to belong in this collection. He is a confusion. Of all their works--novels, , essays--only those are selected that have a contemporary, but seems untouched by the chief contemporary problem. The issues that again special bearing on this burning question. These are not essays on Hauptmann, Gide, Mann, et have divided the world are not in his books. Beside the bitterness and disillusion and growing al., but on their several wrestlings with the adversary as he came upon them in the night and fear that is the story of the past twenty years, his villages and inns and fields have the aura of a offered no quarter. No, there have been books and essays aplenty that have had to do with the stoic Paradise, but a flaming sword seems to guard its gates. And there are many who cannot be work of each, the genesis and exodus of his literary life, and there is a bibliography in the convinced that Paradise, even a stoic one, is not all a nostalgic dream. The sequel should appendix for those who care to read further. Each of these, like Jacob of old, who, if any, lived answer why some of the others were not included. a life of miscellaneous irrelevance, had a vision; for one it was intermittent and brief, for In this day when the crescendo of fear and discouragement of the past twenty years another periodic and long, a vision that gave pattern and meaning for them to the life of the seems no longer bearable, when malignant furies have torn off the mask and the issue (xii) for present. It is to record these visions and to comment, where comment might be helpful, that has humanity is in the balance, it is doubly pertinent that there be calm and disinterested been the purpose of this book. In this way, perhaps, if in no other, this book is different. understanding. The hysteria of guns and torpedoes will have its day; but will the reawakening It is different also in another particular. The authors, though contemporary, are not of peace be any more fortunate than the armistice of November 1918, when one almost heard treated solely as contemporaries, (x) but are seen, if this is possible, in the tradition of European the Angel's song? The answers to this question, and to many like it, have puzzled the thinkers literature, where they will eventually belong. It should not be amiss, then, to talk about some of who are the theme of this book. Out of them perhaps the final answer will be selected. It should their great predecessors, to note resemblances and contrasts. It is this effort at a larger be interesting to pass them in review, ponder and understand. But if it is to be an answer that perspective, perhaps, that is the interest that was always closest to the theme of this book. This humanity can respect, it must also have respect for a full human nature. Anything short of this ought to have at least one valuable lesson--human nature and the human problem are not so will in its aftermath invite a repetition of tragedy. kaleidoscopic as sometimes we are tempted to fancy. How much toward such an answer may be revealed in the works of these authors? There is one arbitrary omission that the reader, I hope, will understand and pardon. I Again, a very pertinent question. To attempt to set this forth in the most typical of our present- have, except where it seemed absolutely necessary, left out all details about the private life of day novelists, essayists, or dramatists is a task that is something more than an academic this author or that--interesting as these are to most readers. There seemed no room for a gesture, partial and arbitrary. It is the motive also of every intelligent reader. One word more, compromise. I am far from denying either their value or their interest. To fail to mention the and a personal one: a picture like this of the contemporary mind has, to me, one enormous vagaries of Gide's experience with sex, for example, is not because of any 'academic timidity.' consequence. Rather than feeling oppressed by a sense of meaningless confusion, one comes The academic mind has, I imagine, outgrown this. Rather it is my conviction that his ideas, as away--I came away--with a glow of respect and hope. Respect, because the best minds of the those of all the others, are a ding an sich, and are good or irrelevant quite apart from the age are at work at the practical and necessary task of understanding. Hope, because there can be author's personal habits or life. that indulges in back-stairs gossip is always no hope unless there first be understanding. tending to obscure the real issue. There is a biography of ideas as well as one of people; this is Hope until hope creates, Out of its own wreck, the thing it contemplates. (xiii) a biography of ideas. It is ideas that are helping today to make history. It is enough, for this book, to attempt an understanding of their scope and significance. This difference will answer friends who have insisted that I ought not overlook such stalwarts as Hamson and Steinbeck, or Joyce, or Thomas Wolfe, or many others. Steinbeck, with all his excellence and power to give eloquence to a class now foot-loose and a crying scandal, is dated. His is a specific problem now very much in the mind of all who contribute to or minister relief. His issues, important as they are, are partial, and affect first the economic life and fortunes of the flotsam and jetsam, that are a disgrace to any self-respecting people. The theme of this collection of studies is (xi) the large issues of the meaning of life, and its panorama, not the Great Plains of America or the slums and factories of any one city, but life 2

I. INTRODUCTION chanted in these two decades by millions. It is only a comment on the vanity of human wishes that these high ideals have somehow FEAR miscarried. The same desire for security and freedom--now the one in the 'What must we have to keep us safe from fear?' spotlight, now the other--is the story of the more significant figures in Jules Romains, MEN OF GOOD WILL contemporary literature. If we may use the much despised word ',' most of it has been devoted to the quest of some motive that can subdue fear or furnish some refuge from its clamor. For this IN AN early volume of Jules Romains Men of Good Will there is a terror, this sense of insecurity, has been our ever-present guest since the sentence that will awaken reverberations of memory in all who have Great War shocked us out of a fancied trust in civilization and the lived during the climax of crises that has been the story of the past conviction that, in a world cushioned with all the comforts of science, twenty years. The two youths Jerphanion and Jallez, one of them the banishment of brutality and evil was already an accomplished fact. Romains himself, are talking of the future, which even in the years How remote that Victorian and Edwardian sense of security seems before the first Great War was none too hopeful. They are talking of the now. China, , Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Finland; Norway, future and some faith to which they can dedicate themselves: where can Holland, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia and Greece--who will be next-- they find a motive to which they can dedicate their throbbing lives? have taught us the lesson. Odets, Steinbeck, Wolfe--to name only 'What must we have to keep us safe from fear?' American authors--are just another of its aspects. The veneer of Safety from fear--is not this after all the motive behind every civilization today looks thin and fragile, and its blessings none too projected new deal, whether it be the gospel of Fascism proclaimed by secure, when overnight its resources can be used for destruction and Mussolini and his Black Shirts in '22 when they marched on to humanity can become the victim of its own ingenuity. 'What must we rid of the specter of Communism, or the motive earlier that blew have to keep us safe from fear?' The quest has become the most up the Tsar and gave Russia the dictatorship of the Proletariat and the important motive in life. To it have been devoted the best efforts of purges of Stalin? Something secure and tangible, a creed and a statesmen and publicists, scientists and men of letters. The 'modernism' personality that will restore confidence and security in a world that of today, then, wears its novelty with a difference. The malady of fear seems devoted to chaos? Even Hitlerism, with its central doctrine of is more widespread, more openly (4) malignant, and more justified in pride and hate, caught the imagination of Germany because it offered a its fruits than at any time in the world's history. motto and a motive to German youth when no other motive seemed at It should be no wonder, then, that there is a seriousness in hand to exorcise fear. It is significant that all these revolutions have contemporary literature that perhaps never before prevailed in the been accomplished by militant youth inflamed by a new hope in a literature of Europe. Superficially the change in purpose and attitude is crusade against fear. (3) almost revolutionary. The old novelist or dramatist, no matter how Paradoxical as it may seem, they have also been an assertion of serious, felt himself obligated to entertain; he told a good story, the worth of human nature and of freedom. For the security these whether it was of an Alceste, a , or a David Copperfield. If he revolutions offered made their appeal to the imagination in the name of had a serious purpose it was well hidden by layers of sweetness and freedom. Their accomplishment was greeted with the same lyric interest. He was an entertainer before he was an evangelist. Even abandon with which Shelley in anticipation celebrated the downfall of Tolstoi and Dostoevsky at times almost forgot that literature has a all tyranny and the dawn of a new age of gold. 'The world's great age serious mission in life when they wrote Anna Karenina, and The begins anew, the golden years return.' How often has this refrain been

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Brothers Karamazov; so far had humor transformed and etherealized knowledge to go by default, even if in some the enthusiasm of new seriousness. discovery and newer liberty may seem an intoxication. But who of our significant ones of today has this disarming gift It is to this 'new' literature that the search which has become this of humor? Satire there is today, perhaps more than is wholesome in any book was dedicated, to see what the new knowledge of our age has age; but that genial gift of intimate entry into the very consciousness of given us in answer to the eternal problems, the meaning of life. Where, the reader, overpowering him by the charm of entertainment, until for if anywhere, can we discover freedom? What is the good life and can it the moment the reader forgets his own personality in the larger world again be rescued from the debris of revolution and war? Can the voice into which he has been introduced--all this who of our moderns of conscience be heard amid the shoutings of dictators and the possesses in a high degree? Who reads a today to be entertained? marshalled chorus of partisans? Will this new war, like the old one, be Who writes first for entertainment, outside of Hollywood and the class one more tragic interlude of man's fatal incompetence? These questions of the pulps? In the history of literature again there has never been all of us ask and re-ask in intimate conversations at the fireside, in anything quite like it-- the desire of writer to instruct and reader to be wakeful hours when alone with conscience. Do our leading writers instructed, so obsessed are both with the contemporary problem, our offer any pertinent promise of aid to distress? (6) fatal insecurity. It is impossible to study the present with the same detachment For the same reason there has never been a class of writers so as one studies the past. There we have a panorama complete and prodigiously learned. To be sure there had been the scholar poets of unchanging, foothills and mountain peaks range on range, as nearly every generation--Dante, Goethe, Milton, and the list might be unalterable as a Himalayan landscape. For them time has ceased to extended--but even the scholarship of a Goethe seems an easy burden flow and their calm majesty early or late can indifferently await our beside the miscellaneous pack of science, philosophy, economics, and coming. Their pattern is of infinity. Not so the poets or novelists of anthropology carried by several whom we shall meet in the sequel. (5) today and their readers. For us time is in full flux, and a point of view The load is not an easy one, and the shoulders of the reader will as full of change and bewilderment as the moving center of a groan in sympathy with the writer. But it is a load both willingly whirlwind. Or better, perhaps, both he that writes and he that reads are assume. Before one can understand the human panorama one must explorers in a new and ever-changing world and the adventure not yet study the making and the manner of the new institutions, and all this is complete. The reader is not unlike the sailor companion of a Columbus a matter of learning and labor. whom the shipmaster allows access to his log. There have been As necessarily, too, it is a frank literature. To be sure there is interesting points of call, some apparently quite novel, some not greatly the naked frankness at times of those that have rebelled against old different from many explored on previous voyages. But what is the restraints. The orthodox of a former age would label it 'naughtiness' and journey's end? And what new worlds shall we discover? think of the fruit of that forbidden tree that brought sin into this world But though yet uncompleted and its end perhaps yet shrouded in and of the moralist whose duty is to detect and damn. Of such mists, this new age of our literature has been at times exciting, serious, frankness in an effort to escape from the banal and once forbidden and and always full of the explorer's daring. It is this unexpectedness that to romp in a nudist paradise there is its share. But frankness that is due to most comes to mind when one uses that hideous word of many the desire to understand, and to leave nothing unsaid that may implications, 'modernism.' In and prose, as in all the arts, the age contribute to understanding, of this there is not a little that may be said has been one of daring experiment. At its beginning, just after the Great in way of excuse. Our new sciences have revealed to us many things War, a young Italian poet, as uncompromising as a revolutionary about human nature. The new fiction is not going to allow this machine gun, shouted the new battle cry:

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Morto e il Passato e con baionette How am I to face the odds Stiamo uccidendo il Presente Of man's bedevilment and God's; Per mettere in trono il Futuro. I a stranger and afraid, In a world I never made. The Past is dead, let us stand (A. E. Housman, Last Poems. By permission.) (8) With bayonets slaying the Present, That we may enthrone the Future. A stranger and afraid, in a world I never made--this is the new and fearsome attitude that consciously or unconsciously is shared by all The Future is the only reality, the Present is worthless, the Past today. is dead, such was the new and daring revolutionary (7) gospel. It was a It isn't the external changes that terrify--though these have been gesture exactly parallel to the revolutions in government and society, more rapid and more revolutionary than at any period of human history. first in Soviet Russia, then in Italy, and again in Germany. A new And their speed, like that of an unbraked car on a steep hill, is regime that would ignore the past and all tradition and history, mutilate accelerated every bewildering moment. No, it is not this, for human the present with liquidations and bloody purges, that the future may be nature has in its long career learned to accommodate itself to the new secure and without fear. and unexpected. But the universe itself has gone back on us, tricked us But these writers are not maniacs. It is that our times seem to out of all conscience, and now with a malicious irony mocks our pained them so topsy turvy, that only by a complete revolution can they forget bedevilment. The old universe of the nineteenth century, in the good the past, slay the indecent present, and set on the throne the secure and days of faith, was a human universe, man-made, it seemed, and fitted only real future. There has been a break with the past, the reverence to for a background of human life and human ideals. Its God, if it needed tradition has given place to distrust, and the present with its confusions a God, was humane and in the ideal human image. It seemed, in its then and insecurity and fear seems incurable. Dislike them as we may, the supposed orderly processes, to encourage human faith and be eloquent revolutions of the past twenty and more years are only the more critical of human dignity. It was man's reason, and its instrument human symptoms of the unrest and fear that is the attitude of all our science, that made this world of man and nature a familiar and even a contemporaries. Why, then, this battle cry of the new revolutionaries, domestic intimate. How completely, as all consciously or though all may not be willing to join in the chorus? Why this unconsciously are aware, this dream--if it was a dream--has been willingness to gamble the present, as do soldiers in an assault? And by exploded. what means may the future be made sure and set upon the throne? The The new science speaks far more cautiously of the orderly answer will doubtless reveal many of the causes of the fear that besets processes of nature, admits chaos as easily as order, and looks forward all. 'What must we have to keep us safe from fear?' But first we must to an end of meaningless night far more readily than to the glory of know what causes the fear. Then, and only then will we be able to God and the edification of man. What consistency with the fate of man, discuss the recipes for safety that are offered by the more typical of our and his idea of human excellence, has any of the new sciences, from contemporary thinkers. astronomy to psychology? I think we can put the answer into one word--we are living Is human nature any the more worthy? The new psychology, today in a world that seems to have dropped a familiar mask and stands since Freud gave it wide currency, has made much of a new domain as before us for our acceptance bewilderingly and shockingly new: a new, irritatingly alluring as the unknowns and the unknowables in physics or unhuman, and menacing world. biology; the abyss of the subconscious. Is this the ultimate reality in human nature? Is it here that one must look for the secret of human

5 personality? Is the life of conscious motive and reflected action (9) certainty that the present and the future can rear a more bountiful only a mask that the elusive real personality puts on, that it may play harvest? Is the present any more congenial to the man of good will; or the better its hidden role of inconsistency, paradox, and unreasonable is polite indifference any less cruel than active persecution? Will the confusion? future, to which many a youthful enthusiast of today devotes his In this break with the tradition of the past there is one more genius, be any more cordial? influence that science has had upon our outlook on human progress in Is public opinion, in spite of its cultivation and education, any history. Progress in science and the technique of comfort, yes; but is more attracted by the good than by the sinister? Have not revolutions human nature any better or any happier? And are human institutions inspired by an inflamed public opinion been as destructive in the past any better calculated to promote the human desire for well-being? In as beneficent? Is there any ground for feeling that public opinion may most parts of the world, or at least in Europe and America, it is true that be more uniformly beneficent today? A glance at what is going on in people are better housed and protected against the inclemencies of the the world is by no means reassuring. Are massed people any the less weather. But are they any happier? Is human nature any less vindictive liable to respond actively to the skilful mover of man? Science has put and cruel? In a word, is human history the record of progress? Does it at his disposal resources undreamed of by the demagogue of the past: exhibit a design, as the evolutionist of a century ago dreamed? the press, whose control is easier than the optimistic nineteenth century fancied; the radio, that blaring immediacy from which there is no Yet I doubt not through the ages one enduring purpose runs. escape; and next television. And behind it all is the education of youth, And the minds of men are broadened by the progress of the and its easy manipulation, as country after country too easily shows. It suns. is only too easy, seeing these things, for the thoughtful to grow Doesn't this pious hope of the poet seem a trifle musty today, as sceptical of the benefits of our so-called scientific civilization, and even does also the pious faith of Emerson? to look back with a nostalgic longing to the simpler past. Striving to be man the worm A distrust of science? Is all of science a gain? The scientist may Mounts through all the spires of form. be never so disinterested, but are his gifts not somewhat like those of the Greeks, to be feared in their aftermath? Has not science given war As some historians and thinkers read history today--in this day its engines of destruction, more cruel than a natural cataclysm? But this of wars and their preparation, with their callous cruelties, cruelties that is only a lesser issue. Has it not by directing its gaze more obviously at those who are not engaged contemplate not with horror, but with cold technique and technology tended to cultivate only the one side of and sheathed indifference--is it not true that it is sometimes easier to human nature--the more obvious because the external? It has given think of history and human institutions as having the aimlessness of conveniences and comforts and relaxations, and banished solitude. But nature? is man's life no more than his meat (11) and raiment and his The good tendencies have been inextricably mixed with the distractions? If something essential in human nature has been sinister. The same malicious destiny, that in a century, like an overlooked, the oversight may truly be tragic. And there are many who advancing glacier, wiped out the excellence of classical Greece and not only ponder, but are giving the answer of tragedy. substituted the decline of Alexander and his successors, may be at work It is not difficult to summarize. The triumphs of science have today in Europe, a plague ripe and eager to destroy excellence just been followed by the reflection on the part of many that its application when it seemed on the point of bursting into full flower. There have is not wholly a thing of pride, nor has it promoted any sense of security. been good (10) and great men in the past, the benefactors of humanity, On the contrary, it is only too easy, and to some inevitable, to feel that but how rare in the morass of stupid incompetence. Is there any it has somehow led to a growing estrangement between man and

6 nature, and between man as he is sometimes revealed and man as he Christendom. The counsels of hope are as interesting and varied as the fancied himself. elegies of despair. Where in this ceaseless revolution may one discover security In these two contrasting types of the contemporary mind I think and peace? It is the old question, anticipated and faced three hundred we can see most of the leading issues today. The pattern may not be years ago by Pascal. 'Whatever the bourne where we think to find rest complete, but it ought to reveal its significance. Many times the pieces and a firm refuge, it gives way and eludes us; if we follow it evades our of this mosaic will be seen to overlap. Some it will be impossible to grasp, and slipping from us, escapes in an eternal flight. Nothing for us approve, but even these deserve a sympathetic hearing and is ever at rest.' understanding. For we are trying to pass in review the ideas that are Is there a way out? There are those, and not a few, that despair. making or undoing our Europe and America; each represents a concrete The contradictions in the world and savage disappointments have been philosophy of life, and each is convinced of its mission. Many centuries too much for the tender of spirit. They have lost faith in the world and ago when a new faith was proclaimed to a waiting world, and its first humanity, stand aloof or turn their backs, and look within or without evangelists were filled with a new eloquence, to the stranger their for some substitute. Gifted with a sensitiveness above their fellows, the varied expression of living faith seemed 'a confusion of tongues.' In the greater is their pain, and the greater their nostalgic longing for the medley today of fresh evangelists there is again a new confusion. Will security of a fancied past. On seeing the ever- widening abyss that this new confusion of tongues, like the old, be followed by a rebirth of separates man's intellectual accomplishments and his moral discipline, the world and a better understanding of man (13) and his destiny? And they seek a refuge where this dualism in human nature can be ignored. above all, will it restore man's faith in himself? For without this faith Or convinced, naively or philosophically, of the human need for all human work will be in vain. Is the story of human nature a record happiness and peace, and seeing no means for its attainment in the way only of change and decay? Or beyond the flux and above its noisy of the world, they take a path apart, a lonely one for most and its brawl, like the silent peak of the Himalayas, is there something for venture dubious. It will be interesting, I hope, to follow some of these human nature that abides, that can restore flagging faith and bring contemporary pilgrims' progresses, (12) and behold the vanity fairs, peace? (14) castles of doubt, and valleys of the shadow of death in which they too find only banality and grotesque tragedy. The story of these becomes II. THE SEARCH FOR BEAUTY an elegy of disappointment, and their promised land an illusion. GEORGE SANTAYANA There are on the other hand those who look beyond the confusion to a promise of faith. To some it may not yet have become 'Understanding too much to be ever imprisoned, loving too manifest, but they have seen the star and follow the quest. For this new much ever to be in love.' journey of the wise men has all the sanction of religion, with all its hope of a new dispensation. Some have discovered its formula, become 'The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded its apostles or disciples, and in imagination or in fact have set about for ever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of putting their house in order. For there have been among them men like courage and laughter; and in these the spirit blooms timidly, and Saint John the Baptist, who have proclaimed the new day, and also one struggles to the light among the thorns.' like a false Messiah, whose book became an inspiration to many, and his acts, for a reproach or worse, re-created a people. There have been PLATONISM AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE others who have called for a return to the ancient highway of the A SENSITIVE, refined, fastidious spirit that can find its home only in a humane tradition and to the religion that once gave power to world of pure beauty; and the gross, noisy, and unashamed banality of

7 the world it can never hope to escape. The demand for beauty in life, under the bo tree, that brought such harmony into the tortured mind of and the tragic callousness of a day that prefers machines to men, and Prince Siddharta, that ever after he has been known as the Enlightened, conformity to self-knowledge. There have been those who have made the Lord Buddha. He, like many another that seeks the true way, had this the problem and the tragedy of the contemporary Hamlet. Hamlet revolted against the pain and meaninglessness of the chaos called life; breaks into the poetry of the soliloquies to take refuge from a tempest and from the vision came the philosophy of renunciation and true of fact, and clings to an idealized Horatio, searching in the poetry of discipline. Such a vision, again in an evil day, came to Plato of the friendship for an anodyne against the complacency and brutality of a relation of the One to the many, of the Absolute to the finite, of that world he cannot make his own. Not a little of this recoil from life one beyond time to the world in flux, and the poetry of this vision, with can discover in the critical philosopher and sensitive poet, George fancied myth and fable, became the poetry of (16) The Republic, The Santayana. Symposium and the Phaedo, as well as the philosophy of the Platonic His world is not things as they are to those less gifted with doctrine of Ideas. sensibility, but ideas and pure beauty. What the tormented and deluded But the world grows older, though perhaps not wiser, and there world of sense has to do and say will come to him only faintly by are its newer accumulations of experience, knowledge and science, and wireless, and it is in his power at any time to turn . His is 'not institutions. No philosophy of the past, not even that of the oriental the troubled glories and brief perfections of this world only, but rather mystic or of the Greek, can quite meet the ever-new demands of the that desired perfection, that eternal beauty which lies sealed in the heart present with its raw experience calling for a new synthesis and a new of every living thing.' And once when he told the story of an effort to harmony. So there is ever the need of the new poetic vision to meet the come to battle with banal fact, the resulting novel was, like Hamlet, a insistent demand of the new hour; a need felt by every sensitive spirit thoughtful tragedy. Somewhat in this manner the German poet that is at the same time also restless intellect. And such was George Hauptmann interprets Shakespeare (Hamlet in Wittenberg). (15) Santayana at the beginning of this troubled century, and such he is now George Santayana has always been a paradox, to the students in his latest and most matured work. There is the poetic vision and who once listened to his lectures on aesthetics at Harvard, to the public there is its philosophic commentary and gloss. Like Plato, too, he who tried to read a meaning in his essays and poems, to the professed breaks into poetry when he would communicate his vision. academics who sought in The Life of Reason and Scepticism and Animal Faith for a philosophical system and creed. To some he was a Love not as do the flesh-imprisoned men poet who had gone philosopher, to others a philosopher who had gone Whose dreams are of a bitter bought caress, poet; and the gossamer beauty of his philosophic weaving, gleaming Or even of a maiden's tenderness with the charm of his persuasiveness, had the dewy unreality of a Whom they love only that she loves again. sunrise before the world is ready to go to dusty labor. Then all were For it is but thyself thou lovest then, stunned by the coming and success of his novel, The Last Puritan, Or what thy thoughts would glory to possess; where philosophy became flesh and dwelt among us. It is philosophy But love thou nothing thou wouldst love the less come to life, vivid and persuasive, and significant to one who would If henceforth ever hidden from thy ken. understand the contemporary mind. Love but the formless and eternal Whole Not all philosophers have been poets, but all great philosophies From whose effulgence one unheeded ray have been born of some poetic experience. And the more significant the Breaks on this prism of dissolving clay philosophy the greater in scope the poetic vision that gave it birth. Such Into the flickering colours of thy soul. must have been the mystical vision, while he sat in contemplation

8

These flash and vanish; bid them not to stay, head gently, bidding us say, Nay, nay to all our madness. Did For wisdom brightens as they fade away. you think, because I would not spare you, that I never felt the cold steel? Has not my own heart been pierced? Shed your 'These flash and vanish; bid them not to stay, for wisdom tears, my son, shed your tears. The young man who has not brightens as they fade away.' This last couplet, like Plato's parable of wept is a savage, and who will not laugh is a fool. the prisoners in a cave in The Republic, will need plentiful comment; (18) and it is the text of the philosophy of The Life of Reason. For there is in He 'shakes his head gently, bidding us say, Nay, nay to all our them a nostalgic longing for beauty, in a world where beauty forever madness.' Such is Santayana, the sceptic, and for the same reason. fades. (17) There is the distrust of all selfish desire, that the vision of Why? because in the wisdom learned through pain, he has learned Buddha translated into the soul's mystical search for its true home in where, and where only, he can lay up his treasures. Not in this world, Nirvana. There is the discriminating choice of the attitude of refined for to him, as to the Buddhist, this world is Maya, illusion. It is as scepticism, with its polite refusal ever to be imposed upon by an unsubstantial as a dream. Even the visions of the great mystics, those illusion. And yet, surrounded with these safeguards, with it all there is that caught glimpses of the light that never was on sea or land, cannot some remaining recompense of a joy in living. All this will be the bone be trusted, for many, even the great poet Dante, have a not unselfish and tissue of his philosophy, when they have become articulate; but the motive behind the vision, the desire to discover a harmony in which breath of life is the poetry. Finally, The Last Puritan is the effort to they may find personal security and peace. Yes, even Buddha, whose translate his philosophy into motives and conduct, and the poet, Nirvana is an Infinity like the ocean, in which the pained human soul, philosopher, novelist has come full circle, from life through like the errant drop of water, can finally lose itself, even this Infinity philosophy, back again to life. must be given up by a thoroughgoing sceptic, for it, too, is prompted by It is a bewildering world that this poet, philosopher, novelist a selfish motive for security. The true sceptic refuses to face the faces--far more bewildering than we who abandon ourselves to paradox of the One and the many, for to him both are illusion. automatic common sense can imagine. The past, the present, the calls Nor is the dreamer of the illusion any more substantial than his of sense, the inhibitions of will and convention, the demands of the dream. The self, this creature of sense, intellect, memory, and will, is reason for form and intelligence, and above all the longing for beauty. but the thing of the single sentient moment, no more. The past, with its 'Sense is like a lively child always at our elbow, saying, Look, look, doors opened by memory, is no more than polite fiction, it 'is a novel I what is that? Will is like an orator, indignantly demanding something am constantly composing,' almost 'sheer fiction.' All that is left is the different. History and fiction and religion are the poets, continually single flash of the sentient moment, the immediate Now, and for its recomposing the facts with some tragic unity which is not true.' What object only the present idea. So it must be to the consistent philosopher then is wisdom? who is speculative only. The ideas that we build up into images of Ah, wisdom is sharper than death and only the brave can love ourselves and of the world in which we live, these may be dramatic and her. When in the thick of passion the veil suddenly falls, it interesting and even edifying; but to trust in them as in something real leaves us bereft of all we thought ours, smitten and consecrated and abiding and to venture into a compact with them, this can be a to an unearthly revelation, walking dead among the living, not speculative blunder of tragic magnitude. 'The philosopher, when he is knowing what we seem to know, not loving what we seem to speculative only, is a sort of perpetual celibate.' 'Scepticism is the love, but already translated into an invisible paradise where chastity of the intellect.' This is a vow of celibacy that the poet can take none of these things are, but one only companion, smiling and when he contemplates a world not worth his affection. It can be a silent, who by day and night stands beside us and shakes his celibacy without (19) amorous dreams, for it is based upon the

9 untroubled intellectual conviction of the unreality not only of all facts associating the thought of changes of underwear and the exigencies of but also of the mind and person that take the vow. food and its digestion with the Venus of Milo or the blessed damozel. A vacuum universe of sentient moments and revolving ideas, There will always be something uncomfortable and undignified in the like the molecular world the physicist discovers for us in which there surrender, and we shall see that Santayana is more than reluctant to are only the electrons and protons and neutrons. For these have reality make it. But like the turtle dropped by an eagle on the bald head of the only in abstract mathematics, and no persistence in time and no poet Aeschylus, this world of life and living, though its essential reality relations in space. It is as hard to picture, as I sit in the secure comfort may be denied, has a habit of shockingly revealing itself to the head of of a half- lighted study with the secure permanence of shelves of books the philosopher or poet. and easy chair, as the clouds of uncountable molecular universes that There is only one way of discounting such untoward accidents: the physicist offers as their substitute. Coherence, pattern, and aim in the cultivation of science and the arts. Science, though it is life, how shall these things be secured that alone can give life a speculatively as indefensible as the world it is concerned with, meaning? And here again, like the theoretical physicist, the philosopher nevertheless does enable the scientist to cultivate the practical means of replies, by common sense. The physicist may know that the electrical defense against some of the shocks of brute chance. It does enable man needle that records the pulse of his experiment is only a flying and to throw certain safeguards about him and live more securely. It might dissolving cloud, and the numbers on his dial are only illusions on an even have prevented the poet Aeschylus from being the target of the illusory and elusive chart, but he treats them seriously, is forced to, or bird. It does provide for the philosopher a larger security even for his his experiment is vain. So with the philosopher--what he denies with speculation, and a means of spreading his doctrines. It can do even his reason, he restores with his 'animal faith.' But it must be by a more. 'The function of perception and natural science is, not to flatter chastened faith, tempered always by the doubt of the sceptic, one that the sense of omniscience in an absolute mind, but to dignify animal life can easily keep the world at a discreet distance when the world's by harmonizing it, in action and in thought, with its conditions.' actions and breath offend a delicate taste. Like science, art is a revelation of life and its conditions: Yet after all it is a necessary faith, for man is not a disembodied science, that life may be understood and controlled; art, that it may be intellect, but an animal likewise of flesh and blood, imagination and more richly understood and enjoyed. Only through the agency of art passions, with a zest for living and a desire to control the world in can the mind in imagination leave its own (21) boundaries and discover which he lives. And life as we know it is a succession of impertinent new realms and their treasures. Such was the experience of Keats on shocks of experience, that even to the most sincere of sceptics will his first reading of Homer, even in translation. interrupt the most pertinent of speculation. Rude as they are, and Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly impossible speculatively to account for, he is forced to a practical states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been compromise with them if he would live, as Homer was forced, in spite Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I of the perfection of the world of his imagination, (20) to compromise been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet did I with his blindness, or as an idealist political reformer with the greed never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and and selfishness of his blind constituency. From this impact of bold: When felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet experience the philosopher is forced to admit the practical and swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He compromising reality first of himself and then of the world of material stared at the Pacific--and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild things and persons by which he is surrounded. surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien. It is a disconcerting compromise, this permitting the shock of In the great poets, by the device of 'literary psychology,' the life to disturb the calm serenity of pure philosophy, not unlike imagination can carry from the abyss of chaos to the stars, and see the

10 panorama of human nature in all its attributes, gaining thereby the hence robbed of their power to deceive, disembodied ghosts of things richer knowledge of others and the expansion at the same time of one's that animal faith regards as real. own mind. For the unintelligible accident of existence will cease to appear This makes the mainspring of fiction, and its popular charm. to lurk in this manifest being, weighting and crowding it, and The illusion of projecting one's own thought into remote or imaginary threatening it with being swallowed up by nondescript neighbors. It characters is only half an illusion: these thoughts were never there, but will appear dwelling in its own world, and shining by its own light, they were always here, or knocking at the gate; and there is an indirect however brief may be my glimpse of it: for no date will be written on victory in reaching and positing elsewhere, in an explicit form, the life it, no frame of full or of empty time will shut it in; nothing in it will be which accident denied me, and thereby enjoying it sub rosa in spite of addressed to me, nor suggestive of any spectator. It will seem an event fate. And there are many experiences which are only tolerable in this in no world, an incident in no experience. The quality of it will have dreamlike form, when their consequences are negligible and their ceased to exist: it will be merely the quality which it inherently, vehemence is relieved by the distance at which they appear, and by the logically, and inalienably is. It will be an ESSENCE.(23) show they make. Thus both the truth and the illusion of literary Can one live with these? The answer is quite specific. 'To psychology are blessings: the truth by revealing the minds of others, substitute the society of ideas for that of things is simply to live in the and the illusions by expanding one's own mind. mind; it is to survey the world of existences in its truth and beauty Such is the value of the art of literature. But the values of the rather than in its personal perspectives, or with practical urgency. It is other arts, painting and even music, are not different.(22)The original the sole path to happiness for the intellectual man, because the human artist, who on the walls of his cave drew with red chalk the intellectual man cannot be satisfied with a world of perpetual change, figure of the dreaded saber-toothed tiger, gained thereby a certain defeat and imperfection. It is the path trodden by ancient philosophers mastery over the form of the monster that in life he would avoid at all and modern saints and poets.' costs, and a certain extension of his own power which could thus 'The sole path for the intellectual man, the path trodden by subdue the horror and make it an object of secure and pleased ancient philosophers and modern saints and poets.'Modern saints? contemplation. As in science, as in fiction, so in painting the materials There may be such; yet Gandhi has selected another path a little closer are the raw and disorderly debris of life. It is the mind, the life of to the real world. But philosophers and poets? If George Santayana is reason, that can give them order and form, transfuse them with of their brotherhood, he has with philosophic and poetic skill defined a meaning, and gain thus in the compromise with life a temporary retreat where he can live surrounded continually with beautiful objects advantage. A truce which has even the illusion of security. Again there and beautiful ideas coming faintly by wireless, and controlled, from the is the motive of the artist in the philosopher who is striving thus to grosser world without, and discover security and peace. Here time and come to terms with life, through art. change and imperfection do not enter, for it is of the quality of essences For even if the universe in which the sceptic, fleeing from that they are timeless and perfect. Into this world the poet can enter at illusion, is forced by consistent and thoroughgoing doubt to take refuge will. Glimpses of it can and will come to the spirit prepared for the is quite a vacuum, the mind of the poet and the philosopher, like nature, visitation in the midst of shattering tragedy, for they are life's abhors a vacuum. The vacuum of space for the physicist is filled with compensation. electrons and their satellites; the vacuum of the poet is peopled with the As in the midst of battle there is room For thoughts of love, and systems and orbits of ideas--essences Santayana calls them. And they in foul sin for mirth; As gossips whisper of a trinket's worth Spied by are infinite like the creative mind that engenders them. They are the the death-bed's flickering candle-gloom; As in the crevices of Caesar's illusions of self and of things, but now known for what they are, and

11 tomb The sweet herbs flourish on a little earth: So in this great disaster contemporary pessimism, the apparent conviction that the ordinary man of our birth We can be happy, and forget our doom. and the saint, philosopher, or poet must be forever separated? The Only in these can be discovered the order and beauty that life denies. essential contradiction results: the paradox of the ideal and the real-- 'Only art and reason, however, are divine in a moral sense, not because and I again quote Santayana: 'I can see no essential reason; but they are less natural than inspiration . . . but because they mount toward historically natural society long ago proved a moral failure. It could not the ultimate(24)heaven of order, beauty, intellectual light, and the harmonise nor decently satisfy even the instincts on which it rests.' achievement of eternal dignities.' Real Politik is not so troubled. Art and morals then become one. For then and then only can be discovered that harmony in one's nature and one's activities that A dream world? Not quite, for Santayana condemns dreams Aristotle called Eudaimonia, happiness, where without inhibition and which are no more than the idling of the mind, and have nothing to friction, without the ascetic's pain and the sensualist's blank satiety, life show after their passing. 'A lovely dream is an excellent thing in itself, is always fresh and welcome, and its exercise a joy. But is it life? but it leaves the world no less a chaos and makes it by contrast seem Certainly not in the sense in which Goethe's Faust approached life for even darker than it is.' A dream is transient; essences are eternal. Of the the gratification of every sense, to live in the tingle of the nerves as coming of the dream there is no formula or assurance; essences come well as in the exercise of the mind. For it was there that Faust and increase with the growing active mind. Dreams leave no trace upon discovered the unappeasable quality of the appetite of both, and with it life and conduct; a right knowledge of essence must by its nature seek tragedy. Here the gratification of the senses is all vicarious and to translate itself into conduct. Of the meaning and nature of dreams aesthetic, with the fragrance of the essences of things and the harmony there is little clue, but essences--'the eternal aspect of things summons of pure ideas, while the senses themselves refuse the illusion and the spirit out of its initial immersion in sensation and in animal faith and mind keeps its sceptical and aloof chastity. clarifies it into pure spirit.' For the celibate poet knows that there is nothing in so- called Pure spirit, and the question of conduct for one whose spirit has reality that can compete in beauty and timeless perfection with its been made pure: how shall he betake himself to the world and there essence, that no earthly love can compete in essential happiness with its play a worthy part? Or to revert to the relation between poetry and poetic image. Keats may write, in forlorn absence, the exquisite last philosophy, and life and conduct, how can the poetic vision that gets sonnet itself translated thus into a philosophy finally return to and make terms Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art-- Not in lone with life? And Santayana to be quite consistent has gratified his age by splendor hung aloft the night. furnishing a concrete answer, The Last Puritan. It is for this reason that But no Fanny Brawne that was ever created can in her response, timid here is a novel that is more than a story --it is a scepticism and a faith. or abandoned, bring such timeless, exquisite, and yet melancholy Mutatis mutandis, one could desire that Plato, the poet, had also written happiness. So a thoughtful poet who understands 'too much to be ever a novel. Its title might have been The Last Greek. imprisoned,' and loves 'too much ever to be in love,' shuns an embrace Those who had followed Mr. Santayana's literary career were that can never be other than 'not respectable, mortal, tormented, not surprised by the appearance of The Last Puritan.(26) confused, deluded for ever.' And yet this living only by wireless brings What might have been surprising was the form it took of a prose a compensating joy, for it is also 'shot through with beauty, with love, novel. Long before he had given much of its theme in the poetic with glints of courage and laughter.' For these are the disembodied Lucifer. All of the main problems in the Santayana paradox, the essences among which he can(25)dwell above the confusion and necessity of faith in something, and yet the impossibility to reason torment, forever undeluded and undefiled.Is this one source of much of about the grounds of faith, are there. To this is the added theme, the

12 chief one, that gives the drama its tragic poignancy, the futility, the seek a higher authority from whom their lives may have direction and pathetic futility of Good: value. He consumes himself in the crucible of his own thought.

Alas! The ghost of good that haunts the earth Is sadder than all But this poem is brief and only an allegory. To translate its evil. ideas into the prose of life and daily conduct a novel was necessary.

It is this that finally crushes Lucifer, and turns him into the The Last Puritan is in essence--and I use the word much in the contemporary symbol of romantic revolt. He is the impotent successor Santayana manner--a Pilgrim's Progress in the Life of Reason.It may be of the long line of tragic rebels against external authority and injustice: objected that I do not raise the question of the appropriateness of the Prometheus and Satan, and their lesser successors, Don Juan, Cain, title, or whether Santayana understands or satirizes the New England Faust. brand of puritanism, or whether Santayana himself is a puritan or Lucifer, the exalted spirit that led the revolt of the angels in Puritan. The meaning of the title itself is quite clear--it is the adventure heaven, is the Reason that demands absolute Truth and absolute Justice. of one who would be 'pure in spirit' in an impure or animal world; and 'For while truth is, I must be.' He sees only too clearly the problem of the last means only a world that yet cherishes illusions. Faithfully the reconciling the demand of justice and the fact of evil, in a universe novel parallels The Life of Reason, in which the author as philosopher created by a God who calls himself a God of righteousness. To Him he surveys the whole enterprise or adventure of the human spirit, which in makes the eternal demand: his own words is 'a romance polyglot, interrupted, insecure,' the Tell, O Lord, the cause Why sluggish nature doth with thee 'romance of wisdom.' There are the same themes in this romance: contend. And thy designs, observant of her loves, By tortuous Reason in Common Sense, Reason in Society, Reason in Religion, paths must struggle to their end. Reason in Art, and Reason in Science. Each in The Life of Reason is a separate volume, and the whole the body of his speculative doctrine. Thoughtful human nature has ever asked this the primal Step by step the novel parallels the speculative adventure, but in the question. It has, like Lucifer, seen concrete life of the hero from boyhood to the end. Here are all the stages of 'his polyglot, interrupted, insecure' progress in search of Right balked with cunning and truth shamed with lies. understanding, harmony, happiness. And over it all there hangs the ominous question, can the peace that the philosopher, and even the As the human conscience, when it looks about it and sees how things poet, may attain be made available to one who would live in the midst go in the world, longs for a more nearly perfect universe, so Lucifer of the battle? There will be pathos in the answer, and even tragedy.(28) contrasts the demand of his reason with the pitiful reality.(27) The problem for the new pure in spirit is far more severe than There should be no more pain, And I, in that republic of the for the old Puritan. Both have an evil world they would escape or just, Might live from day to day in peace, and trust That life, subdue. But here the resemblance ceases. For the old believer in the although mysterious, was not vain. world of spirit had a jealous and angry God as ally of his faith and foe of his weakness. The line between the beauty of righteousness and the Life not vain. But because Lucifer cannot make a new universe, allurements of the world was drawn without shading. The evil attracted he retires from the conflict. He will not submit, for that would be only the evil in his fallen nature, and this it became his moral duty unworthy of the sovereign reason; he can find no companions, for all assisted by grace to subdue. He could pluck out the offending

13 members, and, halt and blind, enter the kingdom of God where all In the same larger sense the other characters in the novel are things would be added unto him. But the new Puritan has no such contemporary states of mind. The range of these is surprisingly large, assurances; his scepticism has denied for him the heavenly kingdom, but it is what has been omitted that is perhaps the more significant. As and his reward is only beauty of thought and peace of mind; for in Everyman it is only those that represent temptations to swerve from assistance he has no God in whose might he can trust, but only himself the path of final victory that appear on the scene. Others, like more and the few who share his faith. The old Puritan could look confidently specialized worldly success, like the narrowed life of the professions or to the Day of Judgment when his would be confounded: the commerce, these have no power over the catholic demands of this new can look only at the panorama of history and read its plain and not modern Siegfried. These lesser and obvious dragons are unworthy of reassuring comment. the magic sword of his sceptical intellect. Only those that might have Such was Oliver, the hero of the story. 'He tried to keep himself power over him and meet some inner demand of his nature appear in for the best,' but where should he find it? He had a 'hatred of all shams, this allegory. scorn of all mummeries, a bitter merciless pleasure in the hard facts,' There is his uncle Nathaniel. He is the Puritan ascetic, but only to bruise himself in their encounter. It is the story of these caricatured to be sure, but none the less convincing, with his narrow successive bruises that is the plot of the novel. To make moral order routine and his steadfast refusal to touch the life about him, until the and harmony prevail in his own life he was willing, like the old Puritan, refusal has become second nature. One could 'suspect that it would to pluck out the eye that offends, 'even if it be the eye of beauty, and to have required more heroism(30)or Nathaniel to yield to temptation than enter halt and lame into the kingdom of single-mindedness.' Or, in a for Saint Anthony to resist it.' Here is something that seems to be of the word, here is the attitude both of the philosopher and of the poet--he 'spirit,' and of spirit triumphant over matter. His was the environment in 'couldn't admit chaos.' And life is chaos. Can one reduce it to order, in which the young Oliver was raised. This was the tradition, as of a oneself, and govern it, and thus discover beauty? Knight of the Cross, to which this new crusader could dedicate himself In a sense Oliver is George Santayana, but in a wider worthily. Cold, aloof, sceptical toward all things save his faith, sense(29)he is Everyman, who feels his own chaste intellectual and dedicated to the good, as he felt the good, he moved through life with moral superiority to the chaos and hears a call to go forth and slay the the singlemindedness of the iron man of Sir Artegall. There is dragon. It is not for nothing that his German sentimental governess something superb about Nathaniel, a beauty of holiness, but a beauty calls him Siegfried. But even a philosopher cannot kill dragons by that is so pure as to be repulsive. wireless. To do this he must possess a deal of 'animal faith' that will There is his father Peter who in youth had known a tragedy and make the exploit worth the effort and will allow him unshrinkingly to was now pure sceptic, as his brother Nathaniel was the man of faith. soil his ears and his eyes with the noisy brawl, and herein lies the moral Peter is as exquisite as Nathaniel, and a person beside of spiritual and the tragedy of the novel. At the beginning of this sketch I called beauty, as the sceptic defines spirit. The beauty of a perfect vacuum, Santayana the contemporary Hamlet. The theme of The Last Puritan is super-ethereal. With his perfect intellect and perfect taste and perfect the theme of a twentieth-century Hamlet, with a task far more serious denial of all ends, and yet his perfect power to assess things with their than righting the wrongs in a court ruled by lust, unnatural ambition, intellectual index, there was nothing to which he could dedicate sycophancy, and senile diffidence. Oliver's world is the twentieth himself. He hadn't hated, he hadn't feared, he had preserved his century, and his attitude as painful. intellectual liberty, but it was the liberty of the single atom in an empty The time is out of joint; oh cursed spite, That ever I was born to universe. He had made il gran refuto, the great renunciation, and with it set it right. has come harmony and peace. Can Oliver follow in the footsteps of his

14 father? One may admire without respect. His father had never a church, and a faith, that calls itself universal, but to accept it and its commanded or fought. parish for a universe was to make a renunciation impossible to Oliver's There is his -but her influence had been negative --who sceptical intellect. was immersed completely in the world of society and its obligations Then there are Lord Jim and Mario, two varieties of pure animal and codes. An unattractive woman from the first, when she snared the faith, both beautiful, sensuous. Lord Jim, 'the common man on a unattached Peter and built upon him her career. Santayana is never pedestal,' possessing the courage of his full animal nature, the joy of above reproach in his studies of women. Non ragioniam di lor ma pure, frank, fearless sensuous life(32)and as unquestioning, yet at the guarda e passa, let us not speak of these, only glance and pass by, as end a bit wistful, as a child that has missed some unsuspected Dante said of certain empty shades on the frontiers of Hell. But there is visitation. And Mario, with the courage of his full human nature. 'Yet his Uncle Caleb, who is neither a vacuum nor(31) ignoble. His is a behind this joyousness there appeared a strange detachment; perhaps it spiritual life very different from Peter's and Nathaniel's. For his is a was this detachment that made the joyousness possible.' For Mario like return to the dogma and the poetry of the Church Universal and Goethe seemed to have found the secret of a blend of art and intellect Militant. and sense that could embrace the whole of life and not be offended. But But there is one and only one thorough, consistent, realistic, it was precisely because Mario accepted life without the effort to encyclopædic expression of faith in the human heart. It is Catholic command it, and enjoyed it without offense at its grossness, that Oliver dogma: the dogma that God has become man, actually and historically could not be Mario. Far less could he be Lord Jim. and for ever, with all that is involved in that mystery. Any revisions Of course, they haven't the least notion what they are going to and reforms of Catholic faith are backslidings into heathenism. fight about. No more has any true soldier. You think it stupid, do you? And this is no partial religion for a partial life. 'You know what Your philosophy requires you to find a reason for everything? But do the French king said about Massillon. "If he had spoken a little about you know why you were born? Do you know what you are living for? religion, he would have spoken a little about everything." ' Are you sure it's worthwhile? It just happens. Is anything in this world There is the rector, Mr. Darnley, with his practical spiritual life, arranged as anybody would have wished--the mountains and rivers or a little less militant and a great deal more sympathetic. For it admitted our own bodies or our own minds? No: but we have to make the best of more sympathy with the world and a larger concern with its them as they are. And sometimes it's glorious work. So is war. But it's shortcomings. He compromised with life, while he yet maintained a horrible, you say, and stupid, because very likely at the end you'll be vision. He can understand Oliver, as nearly as anyone did: worse off than at the beginning. Yes, very likely; and you might say the same of love-making. Nobody would choose and plan it in cold blood. 'Yes, my dear Oliver, you are an ἀν̟75U+03ϱ πνευματιϰός. It is It's a silly business, a sad business; and I know what I'm talking about. a great privilege, a tragic privilege. For just as the merely Yet love-making is in the nature of things, like childbirth and death, natural man ends tragically because the spirit in him is which are horrible too; and no decent person would have put any of strangled, so the spiritual man lives tragically, because his flesh those things into human life, if he had had the say about it. and his pride and his hopes have withered early under the hot So Oliver moved through life, unable to accept it, and still more rays of revelation.' unable to command. The world he knows and can accept and command is the world of ideas, or essences. With them he can be in love, for they But it was precisely because Oliver couldn't find the revelation are eternal and of the texture of one's own mind. But should one make that he withered. Perhaps Rose Darnley came a little closer when she the effort to see their likeness in this world of sense? The discrepancy called him 'an ascetic without faith.' Like Caleb, Mr. Darnley represents can be both comic and tragic. So Oliver, who all his days thrills with

15 the idea of love, can never find it in any woman. The Baronne, truth and of destiny, bidding life renounce beauty and perfection and overwhelmed with gratitude at his generosity,(33)throws herself into life itself, whenever and wherever these are impossible.' his arms; but her kiss has the, odor of sardine sandwiches, and Oliver recoils. Essences do not live on sardines. 'Loving too much ever to be It is the predicament of both Lucifer and Oliver.(35) in love, understanding too much ever to be imprisoned.' Such is Oliver's blessing, but a blessing that, like Hamlet's, carried the (36)Blank compensation of impotence, and this was his tragedy.' 'But if man's moral nature contradicts the world and runs A RETURN TO NATURE III counter to it, ought not that moral nature to be transformed and made harmonious with the reality?' But this is a question that can be put only GERHART HAUPTMANN to the God that created it, and in Santayana's sceptical universe there is no God. So the question remains unanswered, the rest is silence. 'At a distance the world looks pretty enough. From near it's brainless, banal, and indecent beyond words.' 'How old-fashioned I am, how clerical, how rhetorical, talking about divine love. People would laugh if they heard me. I have GABRIEL SCHILLING'S FLIGHT read too much Plotinus. That idea of a divine being, the real object of all loves, is like my false Edith or my false Lord Jim, a 'It was the fruit of the Tree of Life, not of the Tree of the mirage, an idol of the mind, an impossible object. Granted: yet Knowledge of Good and Evil, with which the Serpent tempted the falser that object is, the stronger and clearer must have been Eve.' the force in me that called it forth and compelled me to worship it. It is this force in myself that matters: to this I must be true.' THE HERETIC OF SOANA

And here we have it. Like Oliver's, Santayana's is essentially a GERHART HAUPTMANN belongs to the generation before 1914-18. religious mind and imagination. It has been his tragedy, like Oliver's, to Nearly all the work by which he will be remembered was done before be born too late. In this day of science the seeds of religion fall only too Germany first invaded Belgium and France. But on the anniversary of often upon stony ground and their shoots wither in early youth. And for his seventieth birthday in 1932, before Hitler made literary criticism a scepticism that can destroy faith in a power for righteousness, all impossible in Germany, he was honored as the dean of German if not lesser and substitute faiths are tragically vain. This is the peril of too European letters, special editions of his works were dedicated, and even great understanding when it is united with a great love. Santayana has in America tribute was paid to the dramatist many were willing to himself said it in the preface to his collected works. It might almost be compare with Shakespeare, as the poet of humanity and herald of a new taken as his valedictory to a world that has proved itself unworthy and age. If in point of time he belongs to the older generation, in influence without trust: 'It is therefore in the interests of life to become more and prestige he is very much with us, and speaks a language a intelligent and to establish a harmony also with the environment and multitude find only too easy to echo. In an assessment of contemporary the future. But life enlightened is spirit: the voice of life, and therefore thought it is impossible to omit Hauptmann. aspiring to all the perfections to which(34)life aspires, and loving all 'Brainless, banal, and indecent beyond words'; more than once, the beauties that life loves; yet at the same time spirit is the voice of and recently, have words like these been hurled at the panorama of contemporary life. In Hauptmann's play it is the diseased and horribly

16 beset artist Gabriel Schilling, out of the unwholesome morass he made contemporary life. Why does Hauptmann almost never attain them; but of life, who is crying out for peace, health, and creative effort. But in like his einsame Menschen, his lonely folk, follow their vanishing clue Hauptmann's novels and plays the man of health also can come (37) in an ever nostalgic search? back to life and discover it equally sinister and uncompromisingly Convinced he is at the outset that man ought to be happy, that brutal. For Hauptmann's on his return to Ithaca is no snivelling he has been in the past, and that happiness is recoverable. Perhaps this Gabriel Schilling. He has been dramatically victorious over the faith is in part a debt he owes to Rousseau, perhaps in part to his revolt despoilers of his home; yet the final word is with the inscrutable, and against the once orthodox Christian doctrine of original sin and human the fruits of victory are not worth the struggle. In the last act there is life as a vale of tears, perhaps in part to his own richly sensuous nature. not much to choose between the drowning artist and the disillusioned The early peoples had it, as in the myth of the Garden of Eden. Early adventurer. classical Greece had it, before Socrates and Plato introduced the habit of self-examination and ethical analysis. Convinced he is likewise that And yet in all his lonely folk who have lost the gift of living for some reason or other this faculty for happiness has of late been lost there remains the eager thirst for happiness. The bell-founder, Heinrich, for most, atrophied for want of use, and is recoverable only in the more of The Sunken Bell, has his dream and in the elfish Rotendelein a richly endowed. Convinced he seems above all that the modern patterns momentary possession of its magic power; as the renegade priest in The of society, with their effects on behavior, have made the return of a Heretic of Soana catches his vision in a child of nature, Agata. Both for happy golden age, like that of ancient Greece, a thing past hope or a moment are raised to proportions more than human, and to the thrill belief. From Before Sunrise to Before Sunset only at the rarest intervals of pure creative art. Both fancy that they have tasted of 'the fruit of the do the clouds lift and dispel the gloom; for this creative imagination Tree of Life not of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil with hope is ever under the heel of despair. which the serpent tempted Eve.' Yet both became outcasts. The one Has joy departed from life? Has our new science, with its dies hugging the vision, an ironical comfort; the other becomes a intellectual world of industry and mechanical codes and class hermit amid the fastnesses of the mountains. distinctions, has the knowledge of ourselves that the new Is the fruit of the tree of life today an elixir of death? Must life sciences afford, have all these lost for us the faculty of be accepted only on terms of indecency, banality, and unreason? What adventure into the rich and sensuous joys of living? Have they has Gerhart Hauptmann to say of life? Why the prevailing note of so divided human nature into the social man, the intellectual tragedy in nearly all of his work? His long literary career has been man, the political man, and the mechanical man, that in his compared with that of Goethe. More recently his universality has been patterned and routine behavior, the result instead of inner likened to that of Shakespeare. Are his , like those of harmony and outer, is a 'hocus-pocus of human intellect and Shakespeare, revelations of an ironic and malignant chance against unsatisfying chaos?' Instead of spontaneity, routine; instead of which no human foresight or greatness is secure? Or is there some fatal the uprush of natural emotions and passions, the sterile and defect, some flaw in the tissue itself of his characters as of all vestigial recollections of atrophied impotence.(39) humanity, that renders them ever incapable of grasping the elusive This at least seems the painful conviction that overwhelms the peace and joy? The thrill of living, the sensuous abandonment to the sensitive reader of this dean of German letters. luxury of life's caress, the ecstasy of successful effort, and the Gerhart Hauptmann knows the findings of contemporary intoxicating spasm of victory--there is much search in these our later science and what it has to say of human behavior. While still an art years for the(38)hidden springs from whence such joys flow. They student, wavering between painting, sculpture, and poetry, he interested alone can banish the indecency, banality, and unreason of himself in sociology, psychology, and biology. The interest especially

17 in the new psychology dates with the growing ambitions of that something good, and then finds he can't keep it down.' It is a cause for science, and in his pictures of the symbolisms of dreams and masked tears. gratifications of repressed desires in Hanneles Himmelfahrt (The All this is in excellent keeping with the tradition of what we Assumption of Hannele) he parallels some of the work of Freud and have learned to call naturalism. Naturalism is nothing particularly new Jung. His Die Weber (The Weavers) is a sociological document, in literature; it was only the emphasis given to it by Zola and others that painfully accurate, of the life of a people conditioned by a poisonous made it for so long a dominant interest in fiction and the drama. Nor is environment. All of his plays, even the earliest, show the keen interest its influence by any means dead today. It strove only to bring literature in the biological significance of heredity, and above all, like Hannele, within the domain of the exact sciences, to make its studies of human the tragedy of being ill-born. And most poignant perhaps of all, drawn nature accord perfectly with the findings of science, and thus use the more than once from his own experience, but universalized and coolly pages of the novel, or the scenes of a play, as a laboratory where, with and impersonally studied in the approved attitude of the sociologist, is characters and situations carefully and scientifically 'measured,' their the story of the pain of those unsympathetically mated, and for want of actions and reactions could be controlled and studied and the results understanding driven to lonely tragedy. It is not in ill-starred lives that recorded as so much more added knowledge for human edification and Hauptmann finds the tragedy of failure. The fault is not in our stars, it guidance. is in ourselves, our inherited behavior patterns, our nerves and ganglia To be sure, as in Zola, and again as here in The Weavers, the and glands. examples of human nature and the human situations are anything but But if Hauptmann sees with the merciless eye of the scientist, in sweet and attractive. But neither are the samples of diseased tissue the his sensuous response he is all poet. He understands with the pathologist puts under the microscope in his laboratory. To study the accompanying thrill of every peripheral nerve and the rich sympathy things that make for health one must know, and intimately, the forces that such sensuous understanding gives. This is nothing more than to that make(41)for disease. That the naturalist seemed to prefer to go to say that he in his own person lives more concretely and completely the so-called lower and depressed classes, the flotsam and jetsam of each of his dramatic situations than do most objective artists. It is this, society, as does Gorky, the malodorous and unmusical ones, whose whether one likes the play or not, that makes Die Weber so presence is a reproach and a menace to human nature itself, this unforgettable an experience. slumming habit is due to no special fondness for ugliness and filth, any All the materials of a cool, scientific, sociological more than is the surgeon's addiction to the pathology of cancer. If the treatise(40)are here. The scene is laid at the beginnings of the new social ailment is to be cured it must be studied and understood. A love industry in Silesia. The piece-work, hand-loom weavers are gradually of health demands it, and the resources of science alone make the study being exterminated by the new power looms. The distracted capitalist is possible. as hard put to it as the poor workers to make ends meet; only with him Hauptmann's weavers have become what they are because of a the distress is not, as with them, hunger and utter degradation. All the faulty environment, which again has given them a faulty heredity. They details that a modern case worker would enter into his notebook, all the are misshapen and in pain, and utterly inadequate, because like seeds pertinent and impertinent questions he would askdiet, hours of sleep, they have been cast upon stony ground and their end is as inexorable as hours of work, hygiene, fuel, disease, and health--everything is here, a tragedy. How shall one pass a moral judgment when will and and as concrete as any vivid imagination could require. Take that scene character are atrophied at birth? Inadequate nourishment, a brutal of the poor starving old man, Baumert, who had not tasted meat for two routine of ineffective work--the biological, sociological investigator years. In a frenzy of hunger his family killed and boiled their pet dog, can multiply the charges, as does Hauptmann's indictment, until moral but it was an unhappy experiment. 'For once a fellow has fed on indignation is red hot. So proceeds also the propagandist's program for

18 reform by means of publicity. And this use of the novel and drama for their life that is their resentment, and the craving for something richer publicity and reform was in the minds of many naturalists, including and more satisfying. This the old Hilse ironically finds in the comforts Hauptmann. Some years before The Weavers was written he pleaded of religion and a trust in the world to come. Ironically--for as the words the cause of those below the level of humanity. of peace are on his lips a stray bullet finds its mark and ends his prayer. It is no wonder that when the play was produced its name was a Ich schlage mich zu dem, der Unrecht leidet, Und kämpfe gegen scandal. For its cry is not alone against man-made institutions and dem, der Unrecht tut. human injustice. It is against a world yet incomplete in the making, from human embryos demanding life's fulfilment and denied its 'I fight for him who suffers injustice, and against him who is opportunity. For their last act of revolt and burning was as futile and unjust.' But if this were all, this rise of one's moral temperature, that embryonic a gesture as their earlier and monotonous weaving.(43) one gained from this play, its power would diminish with our The call for full, free, joyous, creative activity, and the knowledge that yesterday in Western Europe and America the battle of attainment of peace, but how fleeting its vision, this seems the central the weavers was being won. theme of Hauptmann's whole literary career. Perhaps more than in any No, it is not as a vision of a sociological abyss that the(42)play other play he has written himself into Gabriel Schillings Flucht is an acting masterpiece after these fifty years. Each of the characters of (Gabriel Schilling's Flight) and Die Versunkene Glocke (The Sunken these distracted and suffering weavers here presented is an einsame Bell). Curiously these two plays are almost perfect complements, both Mensch, a lonely soul, groping after a dreamed of and lost happiness, a approaching the same theme, but from opposite directions. And both restless spirit alone and craving a boon that is ever denied; and each record with perfect, scientific accuracy the story of frustration. sensuously conscious of the ache for which he can find no name. They Gabriel Schilling is an artist--how many of Hauptmann's seem embryos of things that should become, but by the very unfitness characters like him are artists, sensuous, refined, sensitive, dismayed by of their nature are forever denied. Curious as it seems, these dumb half- the crude complexity of the world in which they are forced to live? And created beings are in spirit allied to all the lonely souls that are the to him have happened--one can't use a term that might imply design or heroes of his plays; and a witness to the craving that is the poet Gerhart choice--two women. One Eveline, his wife, a pathetic zero, clinging, Hauptmann himself. affectionate, and suffocating; the other Hanna, a vampire, eager and For it is not against specific situations that these characters are poisonous. In his sensitive weakness he can resist neither except by revolting. Nor are they looking for specific formulas, as they would be flight. So now he is on the shores of the Baltic with his more aggressive were their creator merely a sociologist: and competent friends Mäurer and Lucie, who both have arrived at a compromise and truce with life. Both know just how much to give, There is judgment in the wind! Make no comrades of the rich within their limitations, and will not gamble for more. Both decide to and proud. There is judgment in the wind. The God of save their genius friend, and take him to a region where again he can Sabaoth… breathe in freedom and regain his lost creative power. It will be Greece, that antique home of full and serene human nature. There life can be This distress of the Baumerts and their neighbors the Hilses; the safely quaffed without tomorrow's dry headache. feline rage of Louise, the wife and young mother who leads the But over the scene hovers always the moody, half-supernatural, attacking weavers against the world that is their foe; the enthusiasm of brooding, morbid specter of the sea. Nearby is the ghost of a wrecked the young Jaeger and Baecker, who have seen a corner of the world and ship, with its figure-head of a woman in a wind-blown garment, the now come back to preach 'bloody justice'--it is the brutal cruelty of ewig weiblich, that has wrecked the life of the painter. And beyond, a

19 graveyard with its wall guarded by a forlorn juniper, all part of an with their youthful, sensuous, and joyous innocence. She it is who will ancient monastery, with 'impressive but almost wholly crumbled walls.' give to Heinrich a new and vital motive for life and art, and a new It(44)is no wonder they dream of Greece and scenes less chilling. Into religion that will need all nature for its fruition. There is the this scene come Eveline and Hanna to reclaim the man for whom both Waldschrat, the Faun, full of spontaneous life, the male counterpart of have sacrificed. The scene of the meeting of the three is one of the most Rotendelein, but mischievous and untrustworthy, hating asceticism and revolting in its naked banality in all literature. Each has been more the sound of churchbells, and gleefully telling of his prank in losing for sinned against than sinning. There is no moral, only the rival cries of the bell maker the fruits of his labor in the depths of the mountain lake. the birds of prey and of the quarry. There is also the Nickelmann, elemental spirit of darkness, sinister, whose dwelling is in the depths of the well, and who aspires for the The loathsomeness of it all is throttling me! Give me poison --a hand of Rotendelein. From these two contradictory regions come the strong poison! motives that harass, revive, and finally destroy the artist. The story is simple enough. Heinrich, distressed at the loss of And at its conclusion the harassed and now demented artist his bell and his hope, in a delirium wanders away into the mountains. plunges into the sea and swims out far beyond hope of return. These are unfamiliar regions, but he needs help and rest. He meets and If there is something peculiarly individual and unnecessarily is charmed by Rotendelein, and she guards him against the invading revolting in the predicament of the harried artist, the play of Die lower world in the person of the Pastor, the Barber, and the Versunkene Glocke proposes a universal allegory. The world of the Schoolmaster, by putting about him a magic circle--'Bleibe dein, und commonplace--and the commonplace is the world--always looks dein und Mein'--Be thine own, thine own and mine. He returns to the askance at the artist who would transcend its code. Hauptmann had village ill and despaired of; with the loss of his work he has lost the himself felt its chains and its rebuke. Though the form of this play is an motive for life. But Rotendelein, in spite of the warnings of her foster allegory, and many of its characters are drawn from German fairy lore, mother, Wittichen, comes for him, throws wide the windows, and with the theme has nothing but a contemporary reference, and its bitterness a song of joy carries him away to the mountains and freedom. It is a is that of the poet who had himself known the dilemma of the counter new inspiration, the magic touch of youth and beauty and the claims of spontaneous freedom and conformity. awakening of a richer love for a life in nature. So he sets to work anew. The chief character is Heinrich, the bell founder, the artist, It will be a bell this time to set upon the mountain peak, calling the Everyman, who would be free and creatively active. The world in universe to a new religion of joy in(46)nature, of man's ecstatic return which he finds himself is divided into two mutually incompatible to his once spontaneous harmony. regions, the mountains, unrestrained and full of mystery, and the valley, the home of domesticity and conventional human dignity. So we have It sings a song, long lost and long forgotten, A song of home--a in the latter his wife Magda and their and neighbors, the child-like song of Love, Born in the waters of some fairy well-- Schoolmaster, learning, the Barber, trade, and the Pastor, religion. The Known to all mortals, and yet heard of none. world above is more interesting, and more dangerous. There is the Witch Wittichen who holds converse with (45)elemental spirits, and But the world below, and its old conformities, will not allow three spirits, beneficent, mischievous, and sinister--but all mysterious. this peace to continue. The Pastor returns, threatens, and departs with a There is the beautiful Rotendelein the naive spirit of youth, health, and curse: beauty, an elfish figure with her budding feminine charm. Time and again Hauptmann will dwell on these symbols of awakening beauty The bell will toll again, Think on me.

20

And even after a victory over the villagers, as the bewildered recognized their old king and master in this flotsam beggar-- his Heinrich stands looking down toward the valley, he catches a glimpse ancient nurse and his dog. But how competent he is withal, how self- of his two little boys staggering upward to meet him carrying between contained and wise, how resolute and cunning, as he goes about the them a cruse of their mother's tears. The bell from the bottom of the slow business of counting his resources, until the moment when he has meer begins to toll. Heinrich goes back. them all at his command and his numerous enemies are least One more vision he is to have of his inspiration, but at a tragic suspecting. Then how swiftly he strikes, and surely--this long-pondered cost. Crippled now in body and mind he returns to the mountains. The revenge, with the sweet aftermath, his glad reunion with his patient and well is deserted--Rotendelein has married the Nickelmann--even nature long-anticipating Penelope. has suffered. He calls for her, but is answered only by the Waldschrat Homer tells the best romantic story in the world. But can it ever and the hag, Wittichen. Then from the well comes her sad song begging hope to win the approval of the man of science? What effect would the him to go. Who is he? he is asked. It is a question he has often asked long years of strife and danger and despair have upon the personality of himself. even the sternest and strongest, as was Ulysses? Can a mind, even the Yes! Who am I? God wot How often have I prayed to Heaven most self- possessed, look upon the wars in which gods participated, to tell me. Yet this I do know: whatso'er I be Hero or weakling, upon the grisly horror of a Cyclops, feel the breath of Scylla(48)as it demi-god or beast-- I am the outcast child of the bright sun. devoured his shrieking mates, battle with Poseidon and the sea, hear the witchery of Sirens, taste the glamour of Circe, and be proof against the Now he is helpless and without work. To see her he must drain beguilements of the nymph Calypso--can such a man come home with three goblets, the last of which will also bring death. And at the last firm mind and unshaken nerves? Is not, were the truth known, Homer, there is the fleeting vision and recognition and her words:(47) the prince of romancers, lacking somewhat in truth to the essential frailty of human nature? Farewell! Farewell! never can be thine! Once I was thy true love--in May, in May. And Penelope, abandoned when a bride by her husband, beset by temptation and perplexity in the home of strangers, sought by all the One more play, to dispel the illusion that greatness in life, and eligible for her hand and estates, is not her patience, and fortitude, and peace, and freedom of spirit may be found in the world as it is, and for faith rather a symbol of the human ideal than a thing likely or possible? this Hauptmann version of the return of Ulysses--Das Bogen des Telemachus, too, the son, the baby at the breast when the father left for Odysseus (The Bow of Ulysses). The Homeric account of the return of the wars, kept aloof from the doings of men, raised by women, and ever Ulysses after his long absence is rightly romantic and meets every in terror of open and secret enemies-- would Telemachus be the son of approval except one--the approval of the psychiatrist. How well Homer his father, as Homer pictures him, standing at the hero's side, unafraid, has told the story of the man, 'of many devices, who wandered full and exchanging spears with the enemy? many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy. Many were the woes he suffered in his heart upon the sea' (Tr. by A. F. Murray). The answer, as Hauptmann gives it in his version of the story, is Much did he learn and much did he suffer in the acquiring of his not so flattering to human nature as is the answer of Homer. But is it wisdom. Ten long years of the horrors of the war before Troy. Ten more nearly true? Ulysses is wistful and wavering, strong in the longer years of wandering with their accumulation of danger, despair, moment of decision but swept by strange fancies and vision--never an and romance. Then cast up by the sea, alone, and a stranger on the attractive personality, sometimes even grotesque. And Penelope--we dubious shores of his native land, where there were only two who never see her, for she remains a myth--has she remained faithful? The

21 suitors jest about her, with more than one sinister hint. Was she worth a and Der Ketzer von Soana (The Heretic of Soana). Here we have a life's adventure of a hero like Ulysses? Would their final reunion after contrast between the ideals of early Christianity as Hauptmann fancied all the years of doubt and the final deluge of blood, bring peace and them, and those of ancient pagan, nature-loving Greece, again as the ultimate freedom? Homer leaves a trifle of doubt, but the question for poet's imagination pictures the blessed golden age. The world of spirit Hauptmann answers itself. And with this answer of science to the at odds with the world of nature--is this the eternal conflict, Christ and oldest romance in the world goes the last great illusion, the romantic Pan? There is an old story that in the reign of Tiberius on the day of illusion of perfect happiness. The poverty-stricken Baumerts, the Christ's nativity there went forth a(50) voice proclaiming, 'Pan is dead.' sensitive artist Schilling, the divided in allegiance Heinrich, the The young priest, who became the heretic of Soana, like some others in these aggressive hero Ulysses--and there are a hundred others in the long later days, found the god very much alive. Nor is the spirit of the Christ dead, panorama of unfinished humanity (49)in Hauptmann's gallery--are all even in this day of science and industry, as we discover in the mission of of the stuff of common humanity, incomplete, bungled creations, as of Emanuel Quint, the Fool in Christ. But both priest and fool discovered also an amateur god playing with flawed clay images, into which somehow tragedy. he had breathed something of his own desire for creation. The result for the images is always aspiration and tragedy. Hauptmann had long been interested in the life of Christ, striving to correct the devout of the Gospels by a more Sidney Smith, the English humorist, once remarked that 'life is a accurate study of the psychology and behavior of Christ and his early comedy to one that thinks and a tragedy to one that feels.' The tragedy disciples. He did an earlier study entitled The Apostle, not quite of Hauptmann is that he feels so keenly the essential and fatal convincingly, and then later followed it by this longish novel. It is a discrepancy of the clay images. 'Gott Zerschellte an dein Engel, den er picture of the life of the spirit, not wholly unsympathetic, and an schuf' (Kaiser Karls Geisel (Emperor Charles's Hostage). appraisal of what Christ's life and his influence would be in a section of society today. There are the same mystic visions, the same ecstasy of God shattered the angel whom he created. The comic spirit, as it love for all created things, the same desire to die that human nature ponders this discrepancy of man's angelic pretensions and banal life, may live, the same despising of the vanities of this world, the same finds in it cause for laughter. But Hauptmann feels the flawed angel ascetic denial of appetite, even of the consolation of music, the same also in himself, and shudders at the fate that is not of man's own temptations in the wilderness and the same victory, and above all the making. This is his 'endlessly posed problem of human destiny.' And same superhuman power to love those that despitefully use you--in this destiny is the paradox of an inner necessity that forever urges for short the same triumphant effort to live the beatitudes and through them larger and freer action and harmony and peace, and an outer necessity to gain everlasting peace. that forever thwarts. It is a malicious power of evil ever at war with man's good, and in the combat man is forever impotent. Man thus is In the novel there are the sequence of parallels with the life of also forever irresponsible, and to search for moral issues is a vain Christ. The baptism by Brother Nathaniel, who is the voice in the intellectual pursuit. Even this last reproach, if felt deeply enough, in wilderness that proclaimed the coming, but who, too, like John the itself is sufficient cause for tears. Baptist, deserted the Messiah when he came. There is the same gathering of the humble disciples one fool begets another': Peter, Perhaps none of his works will make this more clear than a James, and John, also Judas. The same proclamation that he is the son comparison of two of his novels, companion pieces, though they were of the Father, of God and of man. Like Jesus he is the son of a written about a decade apart--the Narr in Christo (The Fool in Christ), carpenter and despised by his own people, but loved and passionately followed by the poor and the women and children. There is the anger at 22 the false commerce in the temple and its cleansing. And finally there is wilderness of ice there(52) was found on him nothing but a scrap of the perfect parallel of the serenity of the last supper, when he is paper, with the unanswerable question, 'the mystery of the kingdom?' surrounded by his disciples,(51)the unwitting betrayal, the trial, and at last the lonely Fool, forsaken by his disciples, and his mysterious No peace but a slamming of doors for him who sought the path disappearance and death. of peace in the realm of true spirit, and bewildered loneliness and death, and the unanswered question of human happiness. Will the other Does the novelist give a fair picture of the life of the Christ of road, that chosen by the heretic of Soana be more propitious? The history in this contemporary parallel? The question arises naturally, but healing power of nature, and above all of those most majestic and silent is here beside the mark. This is Hauptmann's picture of one who, in the powers of nature, the mountains. At first their severe heights and their manner of the Christ, attempts to banish the ugliness and the pain of draperies of torrent, wood, and cloud are austere and forbidding to this world by turning like a child to God and living the life of pure them who have always lived in patterned and complaisant valleys. But, spirit. It is one avenue of possible escape. Can man pay the price, and 'if one can rightly speak of such a thing as mountain sickness, then with will the road lead to happiness and peace? no less right may one speak of a condition that comes to persons on mountain heights, and which can best be described as health.' And so How completely Emanuel Quint gave himself to the life of the the young priest that became the heretic found the religion of pure Saviour. 'He fell asleep--when he slept--over Jesus' footsteps.' And yet nature and health. like the Jesus of the gospels he preserved also a certain natural dignity, the dignity of complete assurance and knowledge. He knew the Francesco, a young priest, is sent to his first cure, a village at homelessness of the spirit, in this world, and the pain that its devotion the foot of the Italian Alps. He quickly gains a reputation for studious entails. 'Everyone wanders who is born of the spirit, homeless, with no piety and ascetic devotion to his pastoral labor. The neighbors adore fixed abiding place, without wealth, without a shelter, without a wife, him, and he passes in his visitation from hut to hut, quite unmindful of without a child, with nowhere to lay his head.' Yes this 'unity in spirit the world of nature by which they are surrounded. Like the Pastor in with Jesus' became his true life, and, like the Messiah, this union 'filled The Sunken Bell he has one and only one mission, to rescue the fallen him with a hot insatiable craving to pour out that love, even though his and to discharge his priestly obligation. Suddenly he hears of a family-- blood flowed with it.' the rumor is they are sister and brother, the Scarabotas, and a brood of unnatural children--living on the heights, quite without benefit of Like the primitive Son of Man his was a revolt against a world clergy. And true servant of Christ, he sets out to bring in the lost sheep. that was unlovely and unloving, a world held together by force and It is a shock to him, the unconventional heights, and the labor of whose symbol was the hang-man. 'The mystery of the kingdom is climbing; but it is early spring, and nature is in labor to produce new peace,' but it was a peace that this world could not give. So even the life. All about him is 'a speaking, painting, composing world of followers of Quint were dismayed, as were the first apostles, who wonder,' a thing he had never known before. It is a region untouched by looked for the New Coming and the Millennium. 'Man is the temple of the hand of man and an ascetic denial, as below, where each little God,' and they wanted an earthly temple and an earthly empire. So like elevation, lest it provoke pagan associations, is crowned by a little Jesus, he was rejected by the world, and his last experience was the church, by whose bells the(53)powers of nature are held at bay. For slamming of doors. 'Everywhere he had nothing but the same slamming towering above him now is the inaccessible Generoso, the menacing of doors to report to his Father in Heaven.' And at his lonely death in a and yet beckoning finger of nature. He is troubled.

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He is no less troubled when he meets the ill-mated family. For He was banished with its anathemas and became the heretic, the lonely there is a daughter, Agata, a true child of the joy of nature, a one of the mountains. Peace purchased at the price of pure solitude may Rotendelein, yet with no supernatural allurements. It is she and nature have its compensations, but its price is a heavy one, and it offers no at the spring that call him back to the sensuous joy of sheer living, to solution to the problem of contemporary life, save through denial and the thrill of the senses, and the wisdom in the cult of Eros. 'You know escape. Thus Hauptmann feels again the age-old dichotomy between that Eros is older than Chronos and more mighty.' For Eros is nature. the world of sense and of spirit. In this again he seems almost 'Rather would I pray to a living goat or a living bull, than to one medieval. If Francesco seems like an Anthony who fell before the hanged upon the gallows.' Here is a new life and a new adoration and a temptations of the Devil, Emanuel Quint is Saint Francis who chose the new joy. 'Hunger here was satiety, satiety hunger.' 'His sensations were straight and narrow way of hardship and love. And to Hauptmann both full of idolatry.' were incomplete. But like Nietzsche this later German ascribes the coming of this dilemma to the advent and triumph of Christianity. Union with Agata--union with the symbol of the eternally creative joy of nature. 'Francesco was no longer Francesco. Like the Is there a way out? Can man again, as in the days of ancient first man, he was newly awakened by the breath of God, a lonely Greece perhaps, discover the secret of the full and harmonious life? Adam, a lonely lord of the Garden of Eden.' For it was not of evil that Has the new complex of civilization and its more complex creeds made the fruit of the garden made him poignantly aware, as the first Adam, the search for freedom and peace impossible? All of his novels and but of life itself, the coursing blood of his arteries, the tingle of the dramas are a cry raised in this wilderness, a cry for escape, a nostalgic nerves, the softness of the caress of Agata's love. 'It was the fruit of the longing for the forever lost Garden of Eden, of which man catches only Tree of Life, and not of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, a fleeting glimpse in his dreams. It is curious, too, how youthful all his with which the serpent tempted Eve.' characters are, even the old men, for youth is the age of sensuous longings and ideals, before the evil days come when life is only a Return to the pagan simplicity of the physical life, as it was succession of dreary routine and one can say, 'I take no pleasure in once known in Ancient Greece, and the harmony of personality that them.' Even old Mathias Clausen, the seventy year old Geheimrath, in comes as its reward? There is much in Hauptmann that seems to long the play Vor Sonnenuntergang (Before Sunset), written in the poet's for the naive joy in life that is sometimes ascribed to the fortunate age own seventieth year, asserts his youthful right to warm himself in the of golden classical Greece. We catch it in Gabriel Schilling, we see it in sun's radiance. But his world of sons and daughters and sons-in-law a series of exquisite nature sketches and pictures of the natural man in and daughters-in-law see his wish as the crowning(55)folly of senility. Griechischer Früling (Spring in Greece). But were the Greeks of the Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren. And it is against this doctrine of Parthenon and Oedipus the King and Plato's Republic as naive as our renunciation that Hauptmann raises his ever youthful protest. nostalgic dreamers of a once golden age fancy? Was the Socrates of the Phaedrus, who joyed as he bathed his feet in the brook and listened to In how many of his stories and plays there is the naive the breath of(54)spring, a naive child of nature, giving himself in character, a woman, like Ibsen's Hilda in The Master Builder, who unrestraint to every natural impulse? seems supernaturally unaware of life's complexity and conflict, and by her very nature divinely created to restore to man his lost oneness with Be the answer to this question what it may, the experience was nature. Rotendelein, Agata, the sea-woman of the Meerwunder, as tragic to Francesco as the other answer was to Emanuel Quint. For characters that call man away from the 'hocus-pocus of human intellect against him and his apostasy the community turned with savage fury. and unsatisfying chaos,' and yet, because man can never escape, are

24 always the poignant cause of tragedy. If these are the Eves of the new crisis. He still keeps his place in the Academy. I wonder if he listens to Gardens of Eden, they are the cause likewise of much suffering, for the the official promises of a regenerate future. Certainly Hitler can ignore angel of this 'hocus-pocus world' stands with drawn sword guarding him as one more of the futile and impotent intellectuals.(57) against entry into new Edens. (58) But perhaps, the quarrel of the age with this poet, like his quarrel with the age, is that he insists upon seeing life and human character piecemeal, never with the large horizon that one saw in THE ETERNAL ADOLESCENT IV Goethe and we shall see in some later, like Thomas Mann. It is always the fragmentary man, like the crippled artist, or the spiritual Fool, who ANDRÉ GIDE mistakes his own disability and longing for cosmic law; and always the fragmentary situation, the peasant village community, where life has 'The moment! Canst thou understand the power of its now? For every become fossilized, or the watering place from which life has been for a moment of our life is by its essence irreplaceable: therefore learn moment banished. The inner dramas of these individuals, as the outer betimes to give it heed.' of these situations, poignant though they may be, are not quite universal. 'Nathanael, throw away my book. Do not think that your truth can be found by some one else--Throw away my book: Say to yourself In really great tragedy, as in the Greek or again in Shakespeare, that this is only one of the thousand possible attitudes toward life. yes, and as in some of today, how splendidly equipped the characters Search out your own.' are for life, how sound and admirable. It is the malicious and ironical untowardness of the situations in which Hamlet and Oedipus are LES NOURRITURES TERRESTRES thrown that is their tragedy and splendid vindication. Without tragedy they would never have discovered their own excellence. Against them 'He who loves his life . . . shall lose it: but he who shall lose it shall find Hauptmann's most tragic figures are flawed and peering (56) children it truly full of life--to him shall be assured the life eternal in the future-- who could never prosper--no, not even in a Garden of Eden built but he shall find eternity now even in the present.' according to their own desire. There is an alternative even more painful: to Hauptmann the contemporary world can no longer breed 'What peace! Here truly time is no more. Here breathes eternity. wholesome figures, like Oedipus or Hamlet. It is a world yet in the We enter into the Kingdom of God.' process of creation and characters are only embryos. As a consequence, is the tragedy of this pitiful and poignant and yet futile embryo all that NUMQUID ET TU . . . ? the world deserves or can hope for? Is it for his insistence on seeing life only as a personal adventure and the story of the crippled individual, THE MOMENT,' 'by its essence irreplaceable,' 'therefore learn to give crippled before his birth, that Hauptmann has been so singularly it heed.' 'What peace! Here truly time is no more.' 'We enter into the unresponsive to the new regime in Nazi Germany, or fitted into it Kingdom of God.' These phrases borrowed from two quite different without protest? In the last war he signed the famous manifesto, then books of André Gide, though they involve a paradox, are strangely lapsed into silence. So far as published records go he has neither reminiscent of a compact once made by Goethe's Faust. For it was upon approved nor disapproved the several acts of the drama now at its the unattainableness of precisely this ecstasy of the moment, the

25 discovery of ultimate peace and entire satisfaction, that Faust wagered pilgrim's progress of the now almost outmoded theory of evolution and his soul. And it was precisely this perfect intoxication when time ceases of its faith in human perfectibility. and the soul cries out, 'Linger awhile, so fair thou art,' that Mephistopheles, Faust's counterpart, was unable to supply. Is André The City of Destruction from which Gide flees is the patterned, Gide a twentieth-century Faust who lost the wager to a twentieth- routined, expected, complacent orthodoxy of the(60)late-lamented century Mephistopheles?(59) century. Like Bunyan's pilgrim, Gide flees with eyes averted and fingers in his ears against its cries and allurements. 'The horror of rest George Santayana we called the twentieth-century Hamlet, if and comfort, of all that threatens life with diminution, torpor, sleep, one may borrow the German formula for Shakespeare's hero, the that is what makes him rend asunder walls and arches.' Like Faust's, his delicate sceptic, able to discover a refuge from the brawl of an life is one long Odyssey of wandering, of ceaselessly beating his wings uncongenial world only in the mansions of beauty and pure thought. toward the horizon of the heavenly city. And the episodes are recounted The tragedy of Santayana's hero was due to the practical demand of his in the soties, recits, and his one roman, the half-satirical criticisms of animal faith, that he leave his security and play a role in a banal and contemporary life, the examinations that he subjects his own life to, unyielding world. André Gide is Faust; he too has his Mephistopheles; and the one novel of self-realization by which he professed to round out and like his Goethian predecessor he has devoted now a long life to his career. What is the promised land that he so longs to discover? resolve a paradox. To Oliver the result was tragedy; to André Gide it seems to be serious comedy. Oliver almost from the beginning is the As for Faust, the answer is, the promised land is himself. As adult; Gide, the eternal adolescent. intimately personal as any of our contemporaries, all of Gide's work is his effort at a perfect autobiography. It would be an interesting subject Gide the Faust of the twentieth century. The parallel deserves for some kind of academic research to inquire into the contemporary study. Goethe's hero, a recluse after years of arid scholarship, at last addicts to autobiography. All seem to be writing or reading accounts of discovered the emptiness of the life of syllogism and theory, of the inner symptoms of an age in discomfort. It is the heyday of questions to which there was no answer, of masks hiding no reality. confessions and super-confessions. In previous centuries-- barring an With despair at his elbow, knowing the full risk of his adventure, and exceptional few--people in distress told their father-confessors or their trusting his unquenchable thirst, he closes his compact with the ironic physicians. Today they broadcast to the world. He tells us the story in Mephistopheles. Every desire shall be satisfied, he will drain the cup of all its inner details of his paradox and the quest for its solution. His life to the lees: childhood had been set in the and stability of a puritan, Protestant family, with its rigid ascetic code: formal discipline, formal conduct. If e'er upon my couch, stretched at my ease, I'm found, Then To the good nineteenth century, life was stable and secure--at least in may my life that instant cease! When to the moment I shall say, 'Linger theory. The game of life seemed not unlike a game of chess, with its awhile, so fair thou art!' formal and inexorable board, sixty-four squares, black and white, and the thirty-two pieces, black and white, each according to its kind, kings, Can human nature, itself a thing of Eternity, find Eternity in the queens, bishops, pawns, and each with its own prescribed action. Only moment? And Goethe, with the fine faith of the early nineteenth long reflection and discipline can master the rules of the game, and century, makes of Faust the allegory of all human nature, whose goal is only the master can play it to success. Such was the world in which the the ultimate and to whom all lesser satisfactions can serve only to young Gide learned to play at living. quicken the infinite thirst for the yet unattainable. Goethe Faust is the

26

Then suddenly, with a flash that to him seemed like inspiration, and fixed codes and patterns by which once we measured man's nature all took on a new and spontaneous life and movement (61). In his and destiny? And above all, what becomes of reason, the faculty of autobiography Si le Grain ne meurt (If It Die . . .), he tells of his man's mind that insists on seeing things in fixed and abiding childish fascination for the kaleidoscope and its colored relationship? Does not reason by its very nature arrest the flow, give unexpectedness--a 'nouveauté perpetuelle,' a 'prismatique diversité.' It the lie to all reality? is as though the chessboard of life and the chessmen, as in Alice in Wonderland, suddenly became full of life and incalculable movement. Is it not wiser, better, to trust the instinct, a faculty of the mind The pieces respond no longer to the accepted rules, but are filled with also, but deeper and more intimate than the reason, and more unexpected and spontaneous urges. Even the external signs by which spontaneous? It never thinks abstractly of laws and generalities and we know them suddenly become altered, and they appear as types. It deals only with life in the raw, the concrete and immediate unannounced strangers, filled with unuttered cravings. The purpose of moment, full of sentient power and fluid with movement. This the game no longer is conventional success or failure, comedy or expresses with far more truth the élan vital, the urge of life itself. tragedy, but the sheer joy of eternal movement. André Gide broke with Welling up from the unsuspected depths of personality, it defies reason rules and fixed values, as Faust walked out from his study, and gave his and logic, and speaks a language that is the only dialect of the ear to the spirit of the flux, the new Mephistopheles. unspoiled soul. It imparts its uniqueness to every living thing, discovers the secret of the moment, and makes of each a thing unique, and its These two have never parted company. What does this mean? It own. is a revolution as thoroughgoing in the life of Gide, the cloistered youth, as in that of Faust, the cloistered scholar. For it transforms the We live only in the instant now of life; all the past in it lies dead world in which the released individual searches adventure; it before aught of future in it may be born . . . The moment! Canst thou transforms likewise the adventurous spirit. It makes of life a new understand the power of its now? For every moment of our life is by its double adventure; the rediscovery of the world and the rediscovery of essence irreplaceable, therefore learn betimes to give it due heed . . . I self. And it was upon this thrilling enterprise that the young Gide, when perceived that this had never been, nor thought, nor said. And forthwith he first felt himself freed from the home ties, and in the new world of each single moment appeared an untouched virgin. (All the past of the African sunshine and desert-freedom, threw himself once and for all world drawn completely into the present moment.) time to solve for himself the riddle of life and of living, and to achieve happiness and peace. Such is the first great thought that came to him as a call to life and an inspiration for living in Les Nourritures Terrestres. It was his His first protest is against the old codes and the fixed patterned revolt against the old, of ideas, of life, and nature. Early, too, had come world in which he now felt himself suffocated. 'Everything flows,' as a sequel the second revolt, that against the reasoned and patterned πάντα ἔει, the old Greek philosopher Heraclitus had so taught in codes of conduct. ancient Greece long before modern science with its technique, and the modern cinema with its art, had learned to think of movement without The morality according to which I had lived up to that time had fear of vertigo. But the new science has reasserted the flux, and recently yielded to a more iridescent vision of life. It began to appear to Bergson, at the beginning of the twentieth century, has given it his me that the duties of each of us was not the same for all, and that God philosophical blessing. If nature is in constant flux, and life is, Himself might hold in horror that uniformity against which nature why(62)not also human personality; and what then becomes of the old protested, but towards which the Christian(63)ideal, in pretending to

27 check nature, seemed to strain. I would no longer admit any other than nature it feels the urge of the élan vital, but it may dam its freedom by personal moralities, which might at times be diametrically opposed. I convention and code. However, even to the most orderly come was persuaded that each human being (or at least that all among the moments of fullness, when life breaks over the dam and shows its true elect) had a role to play on this earth, his only, that resembled none nature. Most people wear masks, rigid and formal, to hide even from other's; so that any attempt to surrender oneself to a common rule themselves this palpitating and fluid essence that dies if too-long seemed to my eyes as treason; yes, treason, and to be likened to that confined. Open the floodgates, renounce code and convention, throw great sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no forgiveness, by away the mask, act as instinct directs, and we make the discovery, to which the particular being lost his precise significance, irreplaceable-- our joy or horror, that we are such stuff as dreams are made on, as his 'savor,' that to him could never again be restored. unsubstantial and of eternal movement.

But revolt and refusal to acknowledge any generous similarities Only this remains--that reality interests me inasmuch as it is between himself and others carry their own penalty. And Gide suffered, plastic, and that I care more--infinitely more--for what may be than for more than once; as Faust suffered in Part 1 for his break with his old what has been. I lean with a fearful attraction over the depths of each securities. To Gide it brought an awareness of the desperate loneliness creature's possibilities and weep for all that lies atrophied under the with which the conventional world always punishes every sensitive and heavy lid of custom and morality. non-conforming personality. His autobiography, Si le Grain ne meurt, and his sketches, are full of episodes when this loneliness of spirit Freed, then, of mask, and the floodgates of life thrown open became a physical agony. Here is one from his early childhood: wide, with a new knowledge of life and its meaning, of morals and their cramping evil, and of the exuberant and spontaneous self, Gide The scene again took place at table, during an early lunch; but learned quickly to taste the full ecstasy, ferveur, of the joy of living. this time my mother and I were alone. That morning I had been to This word ferveur becomes for a time the motto of his life. school. What had happened there?--Nothing perhaps. Then why, all of a sudden, was I totally unstrung, and falling into my mother's arms, Ecstasy! this word I would endlessly repeat; I would have it the sobbing, convulsed, did I feel again this unutterable desolation, the synonym of happiness, and even that it would suffice to mean simply to same exactly as at the death of my little cousin. It was as if, without be alive . . . It is better to act without asking whether the action be good warning, the floodgates had been opened of I know not what or evil. To love without troubling oneself whether it be wise or unwise. encompassing and uncharted inland sea, whose billows surged Nathanael, I shall instruct thee in passion . . . immeasurably in my heart. I was more bewildered than sorrowful; but how could I explain this to my mother, who could distinguish through Nathanael, I shall speak to thee of intoxication. Nathanael, often my sobs, only the confused words that I repeated in despair: 'I am not the simplest satisfaction has for me an intoxication, as great as before like the others!--I am not like the others!' had been the madness of desire. And all that I sought on every side was, not in the beginning any sort of a refuge but my own craving . . . Such was this young man's first discovery of life when he had To be alive became for me a luxury of the senses. I longed to enjoy all left the security of home. The world is unstable, the old formal patterns the levels of life, even that of the fishes and the plants.(65) of life dissolve like cloud-castles of a dream. What now of the personality, the actor on this kaleidoscopic(64)stage? In essence it is no Splendid--the life so far only of sensuous passion. It will have less fluid than the world in which it seeks its adventure. Like all living other connotations later. But now this appetite, which had been behind

28 the dam of inhibitions and the decencies of life, suddenly lets go. In a dim, touch fails, 'the salt of the sea does not lose its savor; but my lips bitter sotie called the Paludes, he turns with satirical sadism to describe are already too old to taste it . . . Nathanael. Oh satisfy the joy while thy the marshes, stagnant and full of death, that are the life of the good easy spirit smiles, and thy desire for love when thy lips are yet sweet in a folk who prefer rest to movement and complacent security to the call of kiss, and thy embrace full of joy . . . Oh! if time could only return to its life. Again is he not the newly released Faust, seeking satisfaction in source! and the past return!' But the past and its joys can never return, the orgy of the senses? Is not the rhapsody of Les Nourritures 'La lune est à présent cachée; le jardin devant moi semble un bassin de Terrestres strangely like that of the uplifted Faust who has just tasted verdure--sanglot; livres series; convictions trop grandes; angoisses de the sweetness of the young and innocent Margaret? How different her la pensée . . .' The 'pains of thought,' and so the poem ends. Pure live caress to the impotence of the unanswerable questions from the earthly food, though intoxicating at first, and promising complete rows and rows of stagnant volumes in his dusty study. happiness, brings its recompense of satiety and the pain of despair.

Spirit sublime! Thou gav'st me, gav'st me all For which I For the claim of that part of our nature we call spirit has its prayed! Not vainly hast thou turn'd To me thy countenance in flaming word at times in the management of life and its values. And this spirit fire: Gavest me glorious nature for my realm, And all power to feel her to Gide in his youth had been associated with the categorical mystery and enjoy; Not merely with a cold and wondering glance, Thou dost of God. Man can find that he is an earthly animal with earthly desires permit me in her depths profound, As in the bosom of a friend to gaze . for earthly food in the immediate now; but he can discover too that . . From craving to enjoyment thus I reel, And in enjoyment languish there are spiritual appetites that long for the infinite and for for desire. satisfactions that go far beyond the ecstasy of awakened passion. The desire for holiness. Man must find God; and this means renunciation. But before long, like Faust, André Gide learned that life is not Desire, as with Faust, is the sign of the infinite in man. 'For verily I say all a matter of pure sensuous enjoyment. One may, if one will, think of unto you, Nathanael, my every desire has more enriched me than the oneself as the center of the universe. 'Each mind makes of itself a possession, always false, of the object itself of my desire.' 'Wherever center, and it is about him that he feels the universe revolves.' Granted thou mayest go, thou canst discover nothing save God. Every act of my perhaps as true, but one has also other desires than for the mere ecstasy heart's consciousness each day makes me invent God.'(67) of nerve and pulse. Man is something more than a moving disk for the needle of sense--no matter how sweet, as with Gide, is the music of his It is my experience that every object of this earth that I covet response. And Gide was to discover this while the pages of Les becomes less clear, for the very reason that I covet it, and that in the Nourritures Terrestres were yet damp. He was to write not only very moment that I covet it, the entire world either loses its L'Immoraliste( The Immoralist)(66)and Numquid et Tu . . .?, but also transparency, or my gaze its clearness, to the extent that God ceases to La Porte Etroite ( Strait Is the Gate), and a new paradox. be visible to my spirit, and abandoning the creator for the creature, my spirit ceases to live in Eternity, and loses possession of the Kingdom of For ecstasy carries its own penalty. It is a mood far too God. breathless to be maintained for long. Like all physical intoxication it has its after effects and next morning's headache and dry despair. Here is a paradox indeed--the cry of the body for its passionate Youth, the season of ecstasy, is brief, brief and fleeting. And Les gratification and the cry of the disillusioned spirit that can find no Nourritures Terrestres closes with a movement of disillusionment and happiness short of God. It was Faust's paradox. And long before Faust, even despair. The senses cannot always respond to the thrill, eyes grow it was the central theme of Saint Augustine's confessions. To Gide, as

29 to these others, the resolution of this problem became man's central instinct, instead of placing barriers against instinct; he learned 'the duty. 'I began dimly to see that this discordant dualism might be complete possibilities of man,' especially those formerly forbidden; he resolved into a harmony. And suddenly it came to me that this harmony learned that to be born anew meant to become immoral, as the world ought to become my chief aim, and the search to discover it the obvious knows morality. So he renounced his culture and scholarship, and motive of my life.' Saint Augustine discovered the ascetic answer, and became a child of the senses, obeying only the call of sense and closed his senses against the charm of all earthly food. Faust through instinct, deaf to responsibility and choice and the whole life of art, and wise activity in the world, found a more humane solution. deliberated action. For what before had appeared as virtue now What will be this twentieth-century answer? The story of this quest in appeared as deadly sin. 'Leaving my brain not abandoned, but fallow, I Gide's life is best told in three of his recits: L'Immoraliste, Numquid et turned with ecstasy to myself, to things, to anything, which seemed Tu . . .?, and La Porte Etroite ( Strait Is the Gate). How shall man find divine. . .' himself and at the same time find God? The effect is almost a miracle. He is cured. Back with his wife L'Immoraliste is as nearly autobiographical as the later Si le he goes to Europe and his old background, but with what a different Grain ne meurt. There is a verse in the Bible which serves as its motto. motive. He suddenly has discovered, from the frank sensuousness of 'He who would save his life shall lose it.' But Gide's interpretation of the desert, passion in his love for his wife. But with this heed now to this line differs by a whole horizon from the orthodox. The hero, the call of life there has come also a curious unresponsiveness to Michel, is a scholar renowned for his accomplishments even before he others. The tables are turned, and Marceline, who had waited upon him is out of his teens. Then he allows himself complaisantly to be married in his illness too devotedly, is herself stricken with the same ailment. It to Marceline. He has no passion save erudition, and his wife though is his turn to show devotion; but this is to interfere(69)with the wellings beautiful is almost an irrelevant incident in his severely narrowed of life within him, and callously he allows her to die. existence. He is all intellect with never a pulse beat to share with any of Remorse?Perhaps. For he returns to Algiers, and there on the edge of the senses. An immature Faust, but his(68)awakening will be with a the desert, surrounded by his Arabs who know no moral law, he lives a difference. The plot is hardly a plot, only a series of situations to permit recluse from European inhibitions, and tells his story that he who has the frozen moralist to be transformed into the molten enemy of all ears to hear may give heed and learn. morals. Learn what? That sin is a safer way to perfection than virtue? And as with Gide himself it takes an illness to play the trick. It For only by sin can man discover his deeper nature, and thus live with is then that the bars are down, and inhibitions begin to lose their power. all his faculties a-tingle. That virtue is pride? That virtue is false? For is It is then that the nerves begin to palpitate, and the call of life, when it not also a mask that keeps concealed many of the appetencies without life itself seems threatened, becomes a crescendo. It is the ill, not the the knowledge of which man can never arrive at perfection? Yes, that it sound, that know the meaning of health. It is the dew of fever that longs is necessary even to revel in the dark and sinister, even the worst for the cooling finger of the breeze. So it was with young Michel. He instincts, that one may know that they exist, so that through their was stricken with tuberculosis, and went, again like Gide, to Algiers ecstasy God may be discovered. For only by their discovery can one and its unashamed sun and sands and Bedouin. There on the oasis and take the next step, renunciation. on the open desert, where life and nature strike the unprotected nerves of the body until their insistence cannot be denied, he learned to live, What is renunciation? To answer this question we must follow a and learning to live rescued himself for life. He learned surrender to the pilgrim's progress that takes a strange pathway through Vanity Fair and

30 the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The old pilgrims, Christian, Gospel - the time has not yet come to speak of that; nor yet of the Faithful, and Hopeful, learned quickly to close their ears and eyes lessons I was able to draw until, reading it with newly opened eyes, I against the insistence of Vanity and Despair and Death. Upheld by the found both letter and spirit suddenly blaze with light. And I was filled vision of the New Jerusalem, they were blind and deaf to all that might at once with sorrow and indignation at what the churches had done to allure their senses and obscure the vision. They were ascetics who this divine message, for in their teachings I recognized only the fewest sacrificed the lesser gratification that their cups later might overflow of traces. with the bliss of Heaven. Not so Gide's pilgrim's progress. 'Lead us not into temptation'? Quite the contrary. For only by yielding to temptation What is this gospel not taught in the churches that he has now can man's power to be tempted and even to fall be tested, and his full, discovered? Not a gospel of what one shall or shall not do: 'I can find unique personality discovered. Sin? 'Grant us this day that we fall into no precise prohibition and thou-shalt-nots in the letter of the gospel, no sin'? 'Deliver us from evil'? Quite the contrary. Of what value is rather the duty of fixing one's gaze as clearly as possible upon God.' renunciation if it be not preceded by the full knowledge of all that is renounced, a knowledge gained not from books of morals and divinity, 'Fixing one's gaze upon God' -- this is Gide's ultimate but from the peril of life itself? renunciation, to learn the illusoriness of the finite and the selfish, and to seek to dwell in Eternity. The extreme puritan(171)answer to the Then as in L'Immoraliste, renunciation leads to confession, question of renunciation Gide had known from his youth. 'Renounce, (70)as Gide himself does in his spectacular Si le Grain ne meurt; a renounce is still the word.' Faust also had turned from this stern creed, confession that tells his story to the world, and is itself one more and never again returned to it. But to Gide all his life it sounded like a variety of gratification after earthly food had lost its savor to the now distant bell calling to prayer. Such is the theme of La Porte Etroite: and dull palate. Confession in its turn brings humility, a true humility, that here we feel only too easily how powerful was the summons. It is the of exhaustion. And with this humility man's progress is complete and story of a young girl who crushed all spontaneous, earthly love, salvation achieved. No table of public morals can be effective for renounced all hope of joy in this life, that she might attain perfect human regeneration. For these are but taboos that forbid a man to look purity and saintliness. But not alone for herself, her lover too was to be upon his dark side, and the depths of the unconscious remain saved from all earthly attachments, that together they might fix their unrevealed; they thus unconsciously put a premium upon duplicity; and gaze upon infinity. One must learn to renounce the allurements of sense finally even forbid the discovery of the equally latent good. for the sake of the greater joy that comes only in the world of the spirit. So it was also in Gide's own history. He loved his cousin Emmanuele Here is a curious effort to reconcile pagan hedonism and with no earthly love, and he married her without passion. Was not this evangelical Christianity. The effort had troubled him not a little during the tribute money he paid to the conscience of early youth? his early days. He was to rturn to the theme in his autobiography. But that debt once paid, this gate was too strait for the For it didn't seem quite enough to break blindly with rules; I imagination of Gide. His highway of renunciation is a compromise pretended to find some warrant for my intoxication, a logic for my folly between the sensuous path of the immoralist and the narrow gate of the ... In truth I could have wished to conciliate everyone, and the most puritan, and for him it led into the immediate experience of God. His diverse of points of view, not able to exclude anything and ready to religion is as fluid as his personality, and is his personal adaptation of entrust to Christ the solution of the trial between Dionysus and Apollo the teachings of the Scripture. How can God be discovered and yet the ... How and with what transports of love I was able to rediscover the sensuous thrill of life not lose its sweetness? This question all his life is

31 the Gidian paradox. There is on the one hand the eager acceptance of peace that passes understanding, and the last and only true happiness. life: 'my emotions are like a religion ever alert.' 'It is from complete "'Quelle tranquillité! Ici vraiment le temps s'arrête. Ici respire forgetfulness of yesterday that I create the freshness of every new l'Eternal. Nous entrons dans le royaume de Dieu.'" Here each hour.' 'Memories keep badly.' Life is for him ever an alert expectation. individual discovers his own salvation, for the experience is as unique as the individual, as precious, and without formula. At such moments, But even this alert and joyous anticipation can be in a measure a as Faust to Mephistopheles, Gide can say, does say, to the passing religion. For religion is not static and a thing of formulas and moment, 'Ah stay, thou art so fair.' Thus, without reserve the poet joins conventions. It is those who have falsely spoken in its name, the the mystics, the men who have known God and not been terrified. dyspeptic and morose, who have made it a denial of the joy of living. Rid Christianity of this austere crew and return to the living Christ.(72) But this mystical ecstasy is only for the few resolute individuals(73) who break with convention and rule and can enter upon It is more and more apparent to me that many of the ideas the lonely way of self-renunciation. For only in this way can one which constitute our Christian faith are derived not from the words of discover the richness of reality, self, and the world. But it is not by the Christ himself but from the commentaries of St. Paul . . . If I have to old routine of discipline and self- mortification that this lonely traveler choose between Christ and St. Paul, I choose Christ . . . I search the must proceed. Such was the program set up once by the medieval or Gospel but I seek in vain for commands, threats, prohibitions . . . All oriental ascetic, to whom instinct was the call of the flesh, and reason these originate from St. Paul . . . Is it betraying Christ, is it slighting or the voice and attribute of God. In the Gidian world the roles are profaning the Gospel to discern in it above all a method of attaining a changed. Each man is his own discoverer, and no one's discovery will life of blessedness? The state of joy which our doubts and our hardness help another. Each has his own inner needs of which he may even not of heart prevent us from realizing, is a condition that is obligatory upon be aware until instinct has spoken. The fledged soul, newly awakened every Christian. to its need of eternal felicity, is like the newly hatched moth, alone in the darkness of the night, eager and palpitating for the adventure of A state of joy, finding God is the sentient, ecstatic moment, not discovering its mate. There is danger in the quest, but with its in rules of conduct and the formulas of a creed: this is the Gidian fulfilment comes the final revelation. religious life. God is an experience as fluid as the experience of living; but it requires the achievement of the highest joy of which man is This is the reason why, throughout, Gide gives full praise to the capable. The mystics found it in the complete state of self- acte gratuit, unpremeditated, spontaneous action. It springs from the forgetfulness. Such are the times when all personal desires fade, and inner depths and reveals far more of the true nature of personality than even the sense of personal identity. It is only by such self-abnegation any premeditation, which, because it has ulterior motives, is false. and by loss of all sense of personal advantage or selfish ambition that Strange forms these acts can take at times. In Les Caves du Vatican one enters into the Kingdom of God. (The Vatican Swindle), for example, the hero traveling at night, in a lonely compartment of a train with a single unknown companion, Such also is the experience of Eternity, not the eternity of the suddenly on the impulse opens the door and hurls the unsuspecting future and the old doctrine of immortality--on this Gide is non- victim out into the darkness. Time and again in each of his stories the committal. Hope for such may be based upon only a selfish desire, and characters act on impulse in equally unexpected, though not always so hence be unworthy. But Eternity in the moment. Before this great dramatic roles. To be sure they are not normal, but what, asks Gide, is experience all lesser ambitions reveal their futility. With it comes the normal? Is it not normal, on the contrary, to do just such things, when

32 the inner urge calls for their performance? To fail to respond is to miss writing of the novel, the story of the author's commerce with the the cue and thus to begin the deterioration that will ultimately lead to characters and his efforts to understand them?(75) the tragic loss of the precious essence of reality. The experience of God can never come in any other way.(74) 'If I don't succeed in writing the book, it will be because the history of the book will have interested me more than the book itself-- The quickest, the most sudden action seemed to me to be the taken the book's place; and it will be a very good thing.' best. It appeared to me that my action was all the more sincere in that I was sweeping away before it all these considerations with which I This is exactly what has happened. As Eduard writes again: 'I attempted to justify it at first. Henceforward acting haphazardly and invent the character of a novelist,'--and for this Gide had no better without giving myself time to reflect, my slightest actions appear to me possible figure than himself--'whom I make my central figure; and the more significant since they are no longer reasoned out. subject of the book, if you must have one, is just that very struggle between what reality offers him and what he himself desires to make of But most people define the normal by the codes and patterns of it.' As the novel progresses Eduard becomes absorbed in the reality and reasoned conduct. They wear masks, says Gide, that hide reality even its amazing absence of simplicity, though at first the characters seemed from themselves. They think of themselves and of others not as living of the simplest texture. In his interest in the complexity and and fluid, but as of characters with definable traits. They calculate unexpectedness he loses slowly the desire to make anything of them, or motives and catalogue values and measure success and failure by the sees its futility, and with that the novel ends. So the theme develops; accepted rules of the game. It was to expose this view of life that he the springs of life are deep, even in the most apparently elementary wrote his one and only novel, Les Faux-Monnayeurs (The characters, boys and girls; and to understand completely, let alone Counterfeiters). It has for its motto a line quoted from Pascal: "'Rien direct them, is beyond the power of supreme wisdom. n'est simple de ce qui s'offre a l'âme; et l'âme ne s'offre jamais simple a aucune sujet.'" Life and motives are never quite so clear and definable The allegory of the story is furnished by a counterfeiting effort as we sometimes naively suppose. He who would understand must first for which some of the characters are responsible. The coins, twenty and sympathize and then probe deep. ten franc pieces, are apparently of simple gold, they ring true, and pass without difficulty. But they are only gilded, and if rubbed violently the Rightly therefore the real hero--the novel has no conventional gilt comes off exposing the counterfeit. The story, such as it is, is the hero--is the author himself, André Gide, who here calls himself Eduard, successive harsh rubbings that one after another display the unexpected the benevolent uncle, the self-obliterating lover, a novelist also, and a depths in all manner of apparently downright and simple characters. As man who never pronounces judgment. He only observes, analyzes, and it is with characters, so it is with feelings, motives, and even words that tries to understand. It really is not a novel at all; though it started out to pass current for true coin. Take this example: it is not the author be the author's only novel and last book. 'I must in order to write this speaking, but the character most nearly a villain, but a villain only book well, persuade myself that it is the only novel and the last book I because he sees through the mask and gilt to the metal beneath: shall ever write. Without reserve I want to pour into it everything.' These words from Eduard's journal apply with equal truth to Gide. For We live upon nothing but feelings which have been taken for The Counterfeiters was to have been his last work, and it is the only granted once for all and which the reader imagines he experiences, work that he calls a novel. But is it really a novel, or the history of the because he believes everything he sees in print; the author builds on this as he does on the conventions which he(76)believes to be the

33 foundations of his art. These feelings ring as false as counters, but they Can Gide's ideal of freedom ever be translated into pass current. And as everyone knows that 'bad money drives out good,' human(77)institutions? Is not his ideal, like himself, ever fluid and a man who should offer the public real coins would seem to be unpredictable, eternal adolescence searching for itself in the unweeded defrauding us. In a world in which everyone cheats, it's the honest man garden of its own vagaries? Gide has no formula or advice for the who passes for a charlatan. I give you fair warning if I edit a review, it present insecurity and unrest except the mystic vision, no rule of will be in order to prick bladders--in order to demonetize fine feelings, conduct except the acte gratuit, and no compensation in living except and those promissory notes which go by the name of words. in the thrill of the sentient moment and the art that gives it expression. In his world theology, ethics, aesthetics are almost synonymous. It is It is a novel of ideas--'I must confess that ideas interest me more difficult to build a new world, in place of the old he would have us than men--interest me more than anything.' But ideas can get destroy, out of these unusual ingredients. His state of perfect bliss lies themselves understood only through men, if we can read them aright. only in the mythical past, that of Adam alone with God in the spring in And the moral seems to show that life is more incalculable, more the Garden of Eden. Gide is the ever youthful and ever lonely restless, this élan vital, than any ideas we can entertain regarding it. individualist. So was Faust until experience had taught him his The 'essence of man's being,' this inner, fluid, personality, how seldom limitations. (78) is it discovered and allowed to act undisturbed. And the loss of it is the final human tragedy. 'Moral tragedy--the tragedy, for instance, which FUTILITY IN MASQUERADE V gives such terrific meaning to the gospel text; if salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?--that is the tragedy with which I am LUIGI PIRANDELLO concerned.' 'With different persons, we may be quite different individuals. We The tragedy of the lost individual. To escape the banality and cling, however, to the illusion that we remain identical for all persons cruelty of modern society, after he had seen its fruit in the oppression and every situation. Nothing could be more false than this illusion, as of more primitive races in the Belgian Congo, Gide turned with hope to we realize when suddenly surprised in the midst of some particular the new gospel of Communism,* and to the experiment on a wide scale action. We know that we are not wholly committed and expressed in in Russia. Something more and interesting could be made of Gide's this action, and that it would be a cruel injustice if a man were judged conversion to Communism. Basically it is part of his ceaseless solely upon the strength of it, pinned down perpetually to this particular restlessness. But this is not the place to discuss it or its implications. It moment as if the whole of his life were thereby summarized and made seems just one more fresh experiment, like his visit to Algiers, to find a manifest.' cure. SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR One visit to Russia was enough. He came back disillusioned. In another connection we shall hear his warning to a people that in the 'A pig is a pig, and that's all; whereas that fellow over there--not name of freedom fasten yet tighter the yoke of conformity. Though still meaning to contradict you--may be a pig, but he's also a lawyer! And professing a faith in the ideal of finding freedom in Communism, like that other one there, he is a pig, but also a notary; and this one coming Plato of old, he seems to have lost hope that it can be translated into now, he's a pig but also a watchmaker. Yes, behind him, a pig, but also reality in this imperfect world. a druggist. A difference, Sir, quite a difference!

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'Humanity?Humanity? That's humanity for you! There! You sophistications. And more than any other, Pirandello is sophisticated still recognize it?' and disillusioned and therefore bitter. Like Strindberg he has more than once exclaimed: 'People clamor for the joy of life and theatrical OUR LORD OF THE SHIP managers order farces, as though the joy of life consists in being foolish--I found the joy of life in the powerful, cruel struggle of life, HUMANITY in masquerade. The poet André Gide has so seen the life and my enjoyment is in discovering something, in learning something.' of today, and the result to him was tragedy, the exchange of reality for (Preface to Lady Julia) the counterfeit. Pirandello, with the technique of the psychiatrist, also lifts the mask, but what he sees below brings only the response of In the same way Pirandello finds a cruel difference between life thoughtful, grim comedy. and the ideas people have of life. One of his latest plays, La Trappola (The Trap), is only an extended harangue on the theme that nearly all of Pigs, pigs, below the mask--lawyers, doctors, rich-man, us are victims in a trap, caught and fixed and 'stagnant' instead of 'free poorman, beggarman, thief--all pigs, animals all, driven by the élan and fluid.' Rats in a trap, squirrels in a cage. But 'life is the(80)wind, vital, and putting on masks to disguise the unrespectable business that life is the sea, life is fire, not the earth that crusts over and takes a form. life is. Such is an easy and quick generalization that one is only too We are all beings caught in a trap, severed from the flux that never prone to make about Pirandello; and, like all generalizations, it is only ceases, and fixed forever by death.' All this may be most excellent partly true. For Pirandello, though he hated, also loved life, though he poetry--no doubt it is profoundly moving--it is sophisticated, for no one found it ugly he also saw its beauty. 'A man, I have tried to tell without taking thought can arrive at such convictions; but what does it something (79)to other men, without any ambition, except that perhaps mean and what are its full implications? What has Pirandello of avenging myself for having been born. And yet life, in spite of all discovered and learned of life? that it has made one suffer, is so beautiful.' Beauty and suffering--a paradox that would be curious to a former age, like that of Goethe, that It is true that life was unkind, almost beyond measure, to this found true beauty only in serenity, and to which suffering was a means sensitive Sicilian. To read his biography by Vittorini is to read the story to a higher happiness. of a man who almost to the end was a victim, and yet one who at the beginning seemed to have nothing but happiness as his inheritance. But Raw suffering, suffering that leads nowhere, unless to death, others have lost fortunes, been unhappily, even tragically, married, and like the agony of a growing cancer, this, and yet also beauty to one that have yet refused to make the tragic gesture. There is something more has the eye of a physician, the beauty of an open sore, of a malignant than fantastic in this man's Last Will and Testament, which required of disease. Add to this the conviction that his own untoward fate is the his executors that his body be conveyed in a third-class carriage to his fate of all that have the misfortune to be born, and we have one very native and there be given a pauper's burial. One doesn't revenge necessary aspect of the Italian dramatist and writer of fiction, Luigi oneself on life by calling people pigs and kicking one's corpse into an Pirandello. There is another dramatist, almost of our generation, and a unmarked grave--one only gains notoriety. The clue to Pirandello lies greater, who shared not a little of this fate and conviction, Strindberg. not in his life, but in his age, not in his experiences, but in the He tasted life in all of its courses, and found its beauty filled with prevailing twentieth-century conviction: that if one will be rightly bitterness. The charm of the plays, in which he took his revenge on life, curious about it all, and scientifically use the new psychology, one can made him next to Ibsen the leading dramatist of the waning nineteenth come to some paradoxical and interesting theories about oneself, quite century, and a most potent influence on the dramatists of our post-war at variance with all accepted notions and beliefs. For our recent science

35 has learned that the world about us is vastly different from the world all may see them for exactly what they are. The masks under which all we think we see and touch; must it not be so also with the panorama of human nature plays its game of life, thinking to impose on its fellows, life and ourselves? and succeeding, save for the enlightened and disillusioned few, in most plentifully imposing only upon itself. He got his manner, probably, But though sophisticated and convinced of his scientific from the old Italian Commedia dell' Arte,(82)that indigenous Italian accuracy, Pirandello never loses the warm temperament of his native drama of improvizations, where the characters of Harlequin and Sicily; he is filled with pity for all deluded and suffering human nature. Pantalone, of Colombine and of Brighella are passed around among a In the foreword he wrote to his biography we catch the note that over troupe of traveling actors. They select a plot and act the part assigned, and over again we shall catch in his plays, as he paints the aimless ready at its conclusion for a new deal and a new story, and so to the futility of(81)man's life story: 'to love and pity this poor humanity of end. So it is with human nature: we select the mask, the plot is given by ours.' Love and pity, these are the two impulses aroused by Pirandello's circumstance, and the drama of life is on; only now the actors are taken study of life. Often too there will be the recoil of disgust. How different seriously, and the fiction becomes absolute and abiding truth. from the terror and pity that are the motives for tragedy in Shakespeare Pirandello sets out to expose mercilessly the fiction. and the Greeks! But more of this later. Now and again a character discovers that he is only acting a 'Life is a sea,' free and fluid; 'we are all beings caught in a trap,' part. What shall he do then? Can he leave the stage, take off the mask, we are 'crusted over,' like the earth, and finally 'fixed forever by death.' and return to life? One of his latest plays, and most significant, is What does Pirandello mean by these poetic figures? Do they make entitled Trovarsi, to find oneself. The plot is the story of a very great sense? Is life as normally led by civilized human beings something that actress, Donata Genzi, and the theme is the question: is the life of the is not life at all, but quite its opposite? Above all, is there a way by artist, who is living only the roles of her characters created on the stage, which human beings can live life more abundantly? Or, to put the less real than the life of one who lives her own life following the urge question in another way, is Pirandello just a modern and psychological of passion? Where does one more truly find oneself? Donata has never Rousseau? Rousseau more than a hundred and fifty years ago, when the lived except under the mask of a fiction; does this mean that off the new science was political and economic, lifted his heel against stage she has renounced life for an empty existence? She has foregone contemporary civilization because it set up barriers between people, love, for fear that it will impose limitations of its own and be just one encouraged the baser passions, and promoted hatred, oppression, and more mask, and this an inescapable one. war. Is Pirandello, now that the contemporary scientific fad is psychology, raising his heel against civilization because in some way it As to her assembled friends she confesses her private fear, that fixes human nature into masquerading types of personality, when life, she can never shut her eyes to the dreadful possibility of once naive and true, is fluid and would resist all formulas and fixed types? Is committing herself in real life, she is swept off her feet by an Pirandello really, like Rousseau, calling for a return to nature, as some impetuous young lover, and together they abandon themselves to the psychologists might define human nature, without inhibitions and self- career of sheer passion. Her friends are alarmed at the possibility of her imposed creeds? And is such a return now impossible? loss to art, and call her back to the stage. And there the boy, who was to be made to realize the pure selfishness of his love, what it involved to It is significant that to all the collected editions of his plays the public, and thus be read a most moral lesson in self- denial, instead Pirandello gives the title Maschere Nude, naked masks, masks from is horrified to see Donata repeat for all the world the little caresses and which the tinsel of romance has been taken off, pitilessly exposed that intimacies of their private passion. It is shameless, indecent, and he

36 storms out, packs his(83) bag, crying, 'Let her choose between me and were once so lovable, now almost unrecognizable under their wistful the people.' Then the scene changes; she is alone in her bedroom; by a masks, speak with their old brilliance only that they may expose the stage device her mirror becomes a vast stage and auditorium, and she is emptiness of all human nature. We are all fools and dupes of fate; and acting again a shameless part in a triangle. Slowly the vision where all are fools there are no wise that remain to laugh. Comedy disappears. Again she is deserted, an actress taking off the makeup and begins with the assumption that there is a remnant of wisdom left in the undressing for bed, She gets up, opens wide her arms, and we hear the world and that folly is a curable disease. Is Pirandello a sign of the last words of the play: death of comedy?

'E questo è veto--E non è vero niente--veto è soltanto che By many Pirandello has been called an Expressionist. And as bisogna crearsi, creare! E allora soltanto, ci si trova.' 'And this is the was hailed by many artists and critics as a new form of truth--and nothing is true--it is only true that one must create-create! art, it was the novelty in Pirandello's work that first caught the popular And then alone does one find oneself.' So the fluidity of art is nearer to notice. But though the term is new, the manner is as old as thoughtful life, art that is conscious of its fluidity? At least it is sophisticated, it art.The term came to be used after Croce; the Italian philosopher and knows that it is creating only masks, and the artist refuses to create one critic adopted it in his aesthetics as a description of the inner nature of for himself, one which it grows increasingly difficult to abandon. the work of art. He then made a distinction between the work of art--the Expression as he called it--and its physical communication. The latter Even in this play, which is in essence a dramatic dialogue, he called the Symbol, the objectification, that serves as a means to brilliant always, on a serious theme, Pirandello is only following the communicate the state of mind, the real work of art. This last to him is tradition of the Commedia dell' Arte. Eli, the boy, is our old friend the important thing in art.As for Pirandello, we can if we desire call Harlequin, only his mask is distorted with a quite different passion. him an Expressionist, because he is more interested in the drama within Donata is Brighella cast in a more serious role. An uncle of the boy is people's minds than in any external acts. It is the inner conflicts, the the complaisant and not too understanding Pantalone. It is all there struggles between cross purposes, that this form of art is interested in, according to the old prescription; only the plot is different, and the and the external scene on the stage is only the occasion that reveals difference is the chasm that separates Pirandello from the confident age these cross currents within people's minds. It has been called the that understood comedy, laughed at the follies of the unscrupulous, 'shadow drama of the soul,' and again Strindberg is Pirandello's praised intelligent resourcefulness, and felt itself secure, for it knew immediate predecessor. For the Swedish dramatic artist gave his life and appreciated the value of the purgation of laughter. and his happiness to explore these psychological faults that lead to mental earthquakes. It was he who first taught our century to find this But our age has in many high places forgotten the art of inner psychological drama as thrilling as any external romance. laughter. Witness the follies and exaggerations and grotesque posturings and gestures of those that are making contemporary history Long before Strindberg there was Shakespeare, whose great and are accepted with all seriousness, with doglike admiration or tragedies are all of them the crises of inner conflicts. Lear's craze passionate hatred. And the sons of Aristophanes, who once drenched during the tempest and his outbreak of pity for the(85)mad Edgar absurdities with laughter, now turn to bitter dramatic editorials on the reveal a state of mind as vividly as the flash of lightning reveals the futility of all human nature. They seek revenge on the world for their pathos of his exposed majesty. being born,(84)by pouring forth their pity and disgust in a pyrotechnic of brilliant and apposite dialogue. And the old stock characters who

37

What, have his daughters brought him to this pass? formulas of naive psychology. It is because in each of his plays Couldst thou save nothing? Didst thou give them all? Pirandello seems to have a thesis--again as seems true with Ibsen--his has been called a drama of ideas. The criss-cross of motives that Before Shakespeare there were the Greeks, Sophocles and underlies every state of mental crisis can easily be described as a tangle Euripides, especially the latter, who knew how to represent an inner of ideas, and the author's task as that of the skilful prestidigitator; he action objectively and gain power for the tragedy. But the early displays the intricacy of the knots and their apparent finality, and then twentieth century, revolting from the objective reality of the naturalism deftly shows how all might have been disentangled, or how they came of the school of Zola and the downright realists, found the term to be. The result is a severe jar to many a mental complacency. What excellent as a creed in petto. What Strindberg in one of his prefaces we had thought naively was firm and straightforward in human wrote of himself applies with perfect appropriateness also to his Italian behavior now is seen to be a morass of treacherous quicksand and follower: 'An event in life--and this is a comparatively new discovery-- shifting current. And where we had been quick to accept motives for is generally produced by a whole series of more or less deep-seated action or explanation of character, we are left now full of doubtful motives, but the spectator chooses for the most part the one which is questionings and broken faith. Man's mental nature is as much in the easiest for him to grasp.' He then talks of the motives that led to a need of the psychologist and psychiatrist as his physical is of the suicide. 'It is possible that the dead man hid the real one by putting diagnostician and pathologist. forward another which has thrown a more favorable light on his memory.' Now given a drama in which these motives, hidden and Read thus, Pirandello's plays are really dramatic notes from an perhaps even unknown to the person, are brought out remorselessly to expert psychiatrist's notebook: 'Case A, B, C,' et cetera. Each is a the light, and we have what we may call Expressionism. To this extent typical case; and each shows the customary incidents in the everyday then Pirandello is expressionistic. life of everyday people that have gone somewhat askew. There are simply the ordinary mixups that all are liable to: love, jealousy, His 'shadow drama of the soul' is a very different kind of thing business intrigue, family relations, the jars that come to careers, from the dramas of Ibsen. For Ibsen, even in his best plays, like The ambitions, all the little things that seem so small in isolation, but in Master Builder or Rosmersholm, is interested first in a moral conflict, their bulk are life. Only at very rare intervals are these incidents bizarre and the tragic distress is the result of a moral deadlock. To this prophet or romantic, as in Henry IV; but even here the underlying motives are of the nineteenth century the ultimate realities are still moral. And as ordinary as the life of the million and one of us whose tanglements though he refuses to judge, it is because a higher authority has spoken: never get into print or on the air.(87) 'Judgment is mine, I will repay.' The world of human affairs is a moral world; and perverted, sordid, or blunted to moral ideas though his Hence the monotony of Pirandello. One case or two from a characters may be, they never fail ultimately to recognize its nature. physician's record is probably thrilling, for it throws a novel and And of the(86)complex nature of this moral world, and of man's curious light on what one thoughtlessly accepted as simple. One is less inability to find any formula of easy laws that can explain its workings, interested in the second; by the fourth or fifth, one suggests a rubber of of this Ibsen has everything to say. bridge. I can't imagine a theatrical enterprise giving a season to Pirandello's plays. The layman doesn't go through hospital wards for a Now what Ibsen had to say of naive interpretators of the moral pastime, much less through Bedlam. I remember well the shock I world, and of those that pass easy judgment on their fellows, Strindberg experienced when taken through such an institution once in the Orient, first, and then Pirandello, said for those who have the old and easy and as we, a company exclusively of men, entered a women's ward,

38 there was a great outcry and one of the patients immediately and in the other hand, of believing that they are all doing it as a joke, I great excitement began to tear off her veils. Exhibitionism easily ask myself whether all this clamorous and dizzy machinery of becomes tiresome, and Pirandello's characters do nothing else but take life, which from day to day seems to become more complicated off their veils, or tear them from their fellows. It isn't polite; but who and to move with greater speed, has not reduced the human race expects the physician to be polite when talking about his profession? to such a condition of insanity that presently we must break out in fury and overthrow and destroy everything. But there is, nevertheless, a great deal of interest today in the mystery of human nature, and psychiatry, the legitimate and the quack, So speaks a character in Si Gira, translated as Shoot! The is the prevailing science. And the poor word psychology has a rather Notebook of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematograph Operator, an early hard time of it, as it is dragged from the academic laboratory through novel. But it is none other than the author who gives voice to his own the streets to the booth of the radio advertiser. One can't escape this thoughts; and in each of his novels and plays there will be the same new craze. Into it with amazing facility drop all Pirandello's plays. He voice mercilessly at work in his diagnosis. Its theme is always the has the uncanny insight into the fixations, frustrations, compensations, same, the contrast between life, reality, and the fictitious forms or and dramatized self-exhibitionism and masquerades that are a major masks that all are compelled to wear. This is the common lot for all portion of many lives. He is interested in this sort of thing, and he has humanity. This is the contemporary substitute for original sin and fixed his gaze so exclusively on the 'abnormal,' that after a time we too damnation. Dante in Hell wept for the hypocrites that went ask, what is 'normal,' or, still more bewildered, is there a 'normal'? masquerading in their heavy mantles of lead--'O in eterno faticoso Again it is precisely as with anyone even in sound health, who, after a manto.' But hypocrisy was only one of the ten varieties of the sin of long description of the symptoms of various diseases, begins to fancy fraud. There were above it and below many other varieties of original himself afflicted, and calls anxiously for a check up. depravity, and some far more grotesque and deadly. Modern psychology has given us a simpler hell, the one of unconscious I study people in their most ordinary occupations, to see if I can hypocrisy. So this contemporary seer, who also has solved the question succeed in discovering in others what I feel I myself lack(88)in of human destiny, now(89)not in the manner of theologian and moralist everything that I do: the certainty that they understand what they are but in that of physician and psychiatrist, weeps over human fate. 'My doing--. No, go your ways in peace. This is enough for me; to know, art is full of bitter compassion for all who deceive themselves-- the gentlemen, that there is nothing clear or certain to you either, not even cruel derision of destiny which condemns man to deception.' the life that is determined for you from time to time by the absolutely familiar conditions in which you are living. You do not wish or do not But Dante, though he went through Hell, found in Purgatory a know how to see it. But the moment this something more gleams in the discipline and in Heaven a Truth to which humanity can cling for eye of an idle person like myself, who has set himself to observe you, eternity. What is Truth or Reality to Pirandello? The answer to this why, you become puzzled, disturbed, or irritated. question in one way is more sad than Dante's answer to the question of the meaning of Sin. For Dante's sinners had forgotten the way of reason I look at the women in the street, note how they are dressed, and humanity, they knew the meaning of their fate and were without how they walk, the hats they wear on their heads: at the men, hope; but they also belonged, had no illusions about themselves, and and the airs they have or give themselves, I listen to their talk, could never by the remotest stretch of the imagination find themselves their plans: and at times it seems to me so impossible to believe in any less sinister a region. They even took a sinister pride in their in the reality of all that I see and hear, that being incapable, on perfection. But Truth and Reality to Pirandello is precisely the state of

39 flux masquerading as form, a morass of shifting quicksand that fancies his plays and of his novels and stories. The human ego is not single, itself firm and everlasting rock. We are all damned, but we preserve yet rather it can be compared to an onion, with its masks in layers; the one the unfortunate faculty of hope, and an imagination that makes us ever now on the surface shrivels and dies, to be replaced by the next, which mistake its mirage for reality. in turn is already preparing for death. And at the core--a vacuum. Everything human is unstable, even the warmest affection and the most Truth is purely subjective, and, like the fleeting personality of undying hatred. Opinions change more readily than our costumes, for man, ever in a state of flux. It is purely relative. What is true for me is they cost less and depend more on the contents of the intestines and true for me only so long as I wear my present mask; change my mask secretions of the glands than on the logical processes of reason. While and I acquire a new truth. Truth is never the same for each of us. It is behind it all, relentless and meaningless, is the ceaseless flux of life. like a summer evening illumination of fireflies, fitful and passing. For what are we? Is it what we would like to be? Or what we ought to be? Does this picture bring peace and comfort? At least it leaves its Or what other people, and how many are there of these, think us to be? possessor disillusioned and impatient of illusions.(91) And how we change, chameleon-like, with circumstance! What are we? How many personalities in each of us? 'The multiple personality of And Pirandello exalts the irrational urge of the tide of life that every one of us, a composite with as many faces as there are sweeps away all 'age old' creeds and fictions about the meaning of life. possibilities of being in each of us, and finally the tragic conflict But most human nature is too tender to be wise. It hugs its transitory between Life, which is forever fluid, forever in flux, and Form, which ideas and ideals and the masks that it would put on, untaught by their (90)hardens life into immutable shape from which life withdraws.' frailty and brief transitoriness. For this elusive and not to be defined ("'Pirandello Confesses.'" Virginia Quarterly Review) stream, ever new, within and without, is the only truth, the only reality. What is true to me today will be false tomorrow; the same may be false Or it has been expressed with a slight difference by Giuseppe to you today and true tomorrow. Truth is subjective, but relative. There Prezzolini: 'A person, accordingly, is not one person . . . He assumes a is nothing alive that is permanent. There is only the permanence of different aspect according to . . . the "official" character he thinks he death. The wise learn to smile with bitter irony, and study life's represents in life. But, sooner or later, he is bound to discover this whirligig, and so far as possible, like Dante's sinners, abandon the situation. Each of us some day "looks into the mirror," and the result luxury of hope. for us is either consternation or surprise or tragedy or laughter . . . Pirandello stands in reaction against "fixed" characters; against people The only compensation to the rude awakenings that come with who are, as we say, "all of a piece"; against a world filled with stiff tragic consequences to all, to the world's great, like Hamlet or Lear, as unchanging nature.' But as Pirandello shows humanity its portrait there to the world's small, like Heinrich the Bell Founder, or the little can be only surprise and consternation; there is no occasion with him abandoned souls in The Weavers, is the philosophical detachment that for the humane luxury either of the laughter of comedy or of the comes with better insight. Then the wise abandon this futilitarianism in admiration and horror of tragedy. 'What is the saddest sight? It is masquerade, wear the mask that the occasion requires, with the full laughter on the face of a man.' 'The human ego, wriggling helplessly in understanding that it is one's own and not borrowed, and that it is its flux,' ever striving to crystallize, and ever being forced to change its temporary. There is a world of difference between this philosophic form. This is the truth that Pirandello discovered. 'One has to live, that detachment and that of the poet Lucretius. To him, also, the world was is deceive oneself: to let the devilish buffoon act in us till he gets tired, a ceaseless flux: but for him was the compensation that reason offered, and not forget that everything passes.' Here is the theme of every one of

40 a stable highland from which undisturbed by the clamor he might explanations are all quite contradictory. Is this his first wife, who has watch with understanding the noisy brawl below. gone insane? Is she a second wife, that the man, now insane, fancies to be his first wife? Has his first wife died? Why does the husband so Only the dead abide. Here is the central theme of his best- brutally attack his mother-in-law when she offers her explanation? Is known play, Six Characters in Search of an Author. A play, like one of his apology to his neighbors for his actions, after she has tearfully the Commedia dell'Arte, is being rehearsed. The author is on hand to disappeared, sincere? Are they all insane? Why does the wife when she direct, as Pirandello was often director of his plays. Suddenly in the finally appears, heavily veiled, seem so noncommital?(93) middle of these confused proceedings six characters, from the sketch of an abandoned play, appear on the stage and demand that their story be I am the daughter of Signora Frola, and I am the second wife of acted out to its end. They are characters, dead to be sure, (92)but fixed, Signor Ponza. Yes, and for myself I am nobody--no--I am for myself and hence more abiding than author or actors, and hence in their way whoever you choose to have me . . . In our lives, as you see, there is more real, for they are everlasting. 'He who has the luck to be born a something which must remain concealed, otherwise the remedy which character can laugh at death.' our love for each other has found cannot avail.

That is the very difference! Our reality does not change--it can't And finally is the explanation of Landisi, the cynic, who, under change! It can't be other than what it is, because it is already fixed one name or another, in all of Pirandello's plays, speaks ironically for forever. It's terrible. Ours is an immutable reality which should make the author the only just word to be pronounced as the curtain comes you shudder when you approach us if you are really conscious of the down: fact that your reality is a more transitory and fleeting illusion, taking this form today, and that tomorrow, according to the conditions, Well, and there, my friends, you have the truth, but are you according to your will, your sentiments, which in turn are controlled by satisfied? an intellect that shows this to you today in one manner and tomorrow-- who knows how? Illusions of reality represented in this fatuous comedy To this question everyone can give only one answer. We are of life that never ends, nor can ever end! Because if tomorrow it were not, and never can be satisfied. to end . . . then why, all would be finished. The whole play is doubly irritating--irritating because it leaves It is no wonder that these six in their search confounded the us with only the scriptural injunction to answer folly with folly, but author and actors, and then the bewildered spectators in the audience. more irritating because it sets before us as normal human nature a bundle of pathological complexes, and then turns us off with a cynic's Can one establish the truth by earnestly protesting his point of hollow cackle. The old Commedia dell'Arte may have been, and view? Pirandello answers in Right You Are if You Think You Are. Here doubtless was, unreal; but this simply deluges us with a shivering is a bewildered set of neighbors wondering why a certain husband caricature. Here something more is involved than the mere ideas people never permits anyone to see his wife, but keeps her scrupulously have of themselves. There is also involved a historical fact, the man's sequestered. The husband explains his wife's alleged or true insanity. marriage, and a physical fact, the person of this wife. These can be She, he adds, is his second wife. The mother-in-law explains, and established as definitely as a parallel of latitude. Even a great Italian denies that she is a second wife. The husband perhaps, she adds, is dramatist should not talk disrespectfully of the Equator: it can never be insane. And at the end, in an excellent climax, the wife explains. The charged with harboring phobias and complexes.

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One of his most daring plays is known to us in English as Each The ironic sport begins when she is in charge of the child and in his Own Way. Pirandello says he wrote it in a month, less than a her employer distracts her attention by making love to her. The child month, and that it is 'more nearly pure art' than all his other pieces. One falls over a precipice and is killed. Next she seeks the aid of a naval can, if he has had the right kind of night-cap, dream a thing like this in officer who had once asked her to marry him. Now he refuses. less than a night; and in design it resembles a perverse Chinese puzzle Desperate she tells her story(95)to one, then another, but each time more than anything else I can think of just now. As evidence here is the putting the best color on her motives. Her former employer begs for a plot: An actress, Delia, whose background is not quite(94)what it might chance to redeem himself, her old lover again asks for her hand, a man be, the day before her wedding to an artist gives herself to his friend on the street attempts to become her protector; but on each occasion Rocca, himself betrothed to the artist's sister. Result: the suicide of her fate intervenes, the shortcomings in her exuses become more and more fiancé. Now come the flood of contradictory explanations; for all that obvious: and when driven to desperation she tries to commit suicide as the friends now have to do is to discuss the tragedy. One person is sure the final grand gesture in the romantic manner of abused innocence, her that she did it because the artist's mother and sister had not approved of attempt is frustrated and her naked wriggling self pitilessly exposed to her. The lady herself, first accepting this, later suggested that she did it every curious gaze. She is even denied the compensation of tragedy; to punish him for prizing her only for her beauty. Rocca declared he did and her last words sum up the Pirandellian caricature of the old what he did to save his friend, who had promised to give up the woman romantic stories like La Dame aux Camélias. For these one carried a if she could be tempted. Later he denied that she had ever given herself scented handkerchief for the expected luxury of tears. Here you stand to him. Then we discover that Delia and Rocca were madly in love, and as objectively pitiless as the examining police sergeant when now to bring a conclusion not unlike Ibsen Rosmersholm, he declares questioning an unfortunate who has tried to drown herself. to her that they must atone for what they have done. They must drown together in the blood of the dead artist. At the end the dramatist's We all of us want to make a good impression. The worse we are mouthpiece exclaims: 'A pair of lunatics!' They were, but we must and the uglier, the more anxious we are to appear good and beautiful. I remember whose imagination it was that created them. wanted at least to be buried in decent clothes . . . the dress of a bride . . . with a tear of sympathy from people. But no, not even that have I been Pirandello is much more in the tradition when he mingles his allowed to keep! I must die naked. I must die discovered--despised-- caricature with thrusts at the malicious irony of Fate. Vestiri gli Ignudi, humiliated-- found out. Let me die in silence, naked. translated as Naked, is one of his bitterest and most successful plays, and most convincing, because it deals with more matter-of-fact people What are we? Daringly again, and a little more in the romantic and with a more matter-of-fact incident. The chief character, Ersilia-- manner, Pirandello leaves the insistent question unanswered in his best one could never call her the heroine--has had a run of tough luck. It play, Henry IV. Unlike nearly all of his plays, the situation here is a bit began at the home of a consular officer where she was employed as forced, perhaps a bit bizarre. The plot again is laid in contemporary governess. The story, so far as there is a story, is her effort to put Italy. A group of friends, young noblemen and noblewomen, years forward the best explanation of her motives, as she slips from one before had given a masquerade. They had taken characters from the ironically disagreeable situation into another, until at last, like a eleventh century. The chief character had taken the mask of the cornered mouse, she is helpless, all her pitiful subterfuges exposed; she Emperor Henry IV, the lady with whom he was in love, of the is naked. Marchioness Matilda of Tuscany. Each had studied his part with great care, so as to live the scene with complete sincerity. In a procession a rival had pricked the (96)Emperor's horse so that he was thrown. When

42 he recovered it was found that his mind was a blank to all save the But woe to him who doesn't know how to wear his mask, be he history of the masquerade. He was Henry IV, the Emperor who in 1076 king or Pope! had defied the Pope, been excommunicated, and at last forced to make a humiliating peace at Canossa. In a sudden explosion of imperial wrath he stabs his rival. The conclusion is Pirandellian. He can no longer quit the mask, for to reveal His friends were able to humor his delusion, and for years he his sanity is to invite the peril of the law. And he settles down to the old has now lived in a secluded castle with a retinue as the Emperor. He and now quite false routine, taking up a personality that never belonged thinks, acts, and ever feels as Emperor, and his friends visit him in their to him. former disguise. But, as is revealed to us near the end of the play, as time passes his mind clears, but habit now has become too strong for Because it's a terrible thing if you don't hold on to that which him to desire to resume his old personality. At last, and here the play seems true to you today--to that which will seem true to you tomorrow, opens, his friends, advised by a psychiatrist, try to effect a cure. The even if it is the opposite of that which seemed true to you yesterday. lady he had been in love with has now a daughter, almost the image of her mother on the day of the accident; and by subtly using her to But after all, is the assumed personality of Henry IV any the impersonate her mother it is hoped his mind may be restored. less false than the personality of the now awakened count? And what relation have these personalities to the man he had been in the But quickly he sees through the pretense of their masquerade. beginning? He had acquired one personality by accident, like a piratical Angered he turns on them with the bitterness of truth. However, hermit crab that ousts a shellfish and acquires the new home. But had Monsignor, while you keep yourself in order, holding on with both he better title to any other personality? your hands to your holy habit, there slips down from your sleeves, there peels off from you like . . . like a serpent . . . something you don't By a recent biographer this play has been compared with notice: life, Monsignor! (Turns to the Marchioness.) Has it never Hamlet, and praised as a modernization of the old theme. But what a happened to you, my Lady, to find a different self in yourself? Have world of difference, even granting certain superficial resemblances you always been the same? My God! One day . . . how was it, how was between the distracted Hamlet and the distracted count. I am not sure it you were able to commit this or that action? we have not overstressed Hamlet's distraction. But the Hamlet before tragedy touched him is admirable and almost perfect human nature, . . . But we all of us cling tight to our conceptions of ourselves, admirable enough to make him the favorite of all. After the ghost's just as he who is growing old dyes his hair. What does it matter that visitation his malady, if we may call it such, came from the horror of this dyed hair of mine isn't a reality for you, if it is, to some extent, for the abyss that opened so suddenly beneath his feet. It was a moral me?--you, you, my Lady, certainly don't dye your hair to deceive the shock that for him left the whole world completely transformed. others, nor even yourself; but only to cheat your own image a little Pirandello's count had the misfortune to fall from his horse, which before the looking-glass. I do it for a joke! You do it seriously! But I jangled his already none-too- melodious bells. We can speak of assure you that you too, Madam, are in masquerade, though it be in all Hamlet's tragedy; we can speak only of Henry IV's schizophrenia. And seriousness; and I am not speaking of the venerable crown on your between there is a world of significant difference. To cure Hamlet the brows or the ducal mantle. physician must begin with a world out of joint and the some(98)thing rotten in Denmark. Henry IV is only an isolated, interesting, and . . . I dressed as a penitent, today; he, as prisoner tomorrow!(97) perhaps instructive case from a physician's notebook.

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There may be a variety of wisdom and some intellectual heart the findings of the new psychology, and has read them into the satisfaction in tracing the progress of this masquerade of futile laws for universal human nature. There is a certain admirable courage illusions. But one can also suffer from a surfeit of disillusionment, and in being able with a pitiful smile to endure the spectacle of a perpetual the habit of regarding life as an unintelligent cinema tends to lose for us madhouse.(100) also the zest of living. In such a world of Maya even the orthodox Hindu can find no comfort, for to him it denies the final peace of THE WATERS UNDER THE EARTH VI Nirvana. But this illusory, kaleidoscopic masquerade knows no end. Where right you are if you think you are, where each with equal right MARCEL PROUST goes in his own way, there can be no standards; where all are abnormal there is nothing normal; where all are insane there can be no ideas on 'Somewhere in one of the tall trees, making a stage in its height, an sanity. In this case we can do only as Pirandello does, record the invisible bird, desperately attempting to make the day seem shorter, infinite variety in the curiosity shop of delusions. was exploring with a long, continuous note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so The sardonic smile with which this contemporary--and there are powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility that, one would many like him--surveys with pity the victims of their own multiple have said, it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been selves fits the prescription of neither tragedy nor comedy, as great trying to make pass more quickly.' literature has cultivated the humane tradition. For it denies first of all the very source of great literature, the belief in the excellence and value SWANN'S WAY, COMBRAY of human nature. The great characters that tell the story of the power of the human imagination were not the perpetual inmates of the wards of a 'Nothing comes from ourselves but that which we draw out of the hospital. Their ailments were beyond the scope of even the most skilful obscurity within us and which is unknown to others. . . . An hour is a of psychiatrists. 'Throw physic to the dogs'; for these minds diseased vase filled with perfumes, with sounds, with moments, with changing were responsible and moral, and in the measure of the responsibility of moods and climates.' their moral nature their pain or their comic grotesqueness was the more moving. THE PAST RECAPTURED

More than this, even in the moments of their bitterest pain or TIME and timelessness--the silence that arrests 'for all eternity the comic delusion, they possessed a vigorous sense of their self-identity. moment,' the hour so full of past and present and anticipation of the Lear and Othello stared bewildered at a world that had suddenly future that it and it alone seems immortal and the only abidingly real-- betrayed them; Lear with mind(99)unhinged, and Othello driven to nearly all have known these vital moments of life. Then personality righteous crime; but both leave us amazed at the potencies of the stands tiptoe in thrilled expectation, but of what? Marcel Proust set out human mind and its unexpectedness. So also in great comedy we are to explore and to discover the laws of their coming and going. For in shaken by laughter at the infinite variety of folly that human nature can them and them alone he found the secret of the ultimate reality of attain. But though its flexibility be never so great, the human personality and character. Know these moments to the full, and personality remains, self-recognizing and ultimately self-judged and sensuously understand the manner of their appearance, and one may sentenced. Pirandello, with all his power and insight, reflects what can truly be able to say that he has approached the art of self-knowledge. It only be a passing obsession of the contemporary mind. It has taken to is not a logical or an analytical process; the intellect has little or

44 nothing to do with the result. The will has no power in this region of Can we escape the pain of existence only by discovering and revelation. Chance and utter accident may dictate the occasion; and the submitting to the self? result, if the mind be allowed, like the opening flower, to unfold its petals unmolested, is(101)a poet's vision, a rapt moment of complete We live in Time, or at least in what we call Time, the swing of understanding and fulfilment. the pendulum geared to the daily rotation of the earth, sunrise, noon, sunset, night, a regularly recurring time table, an inexorable cosmic What moments of our lives are real? André Gide found them in event, and forcing into its rhythm the days, hours, seasons, years, and the moments of unpremeditated action, the acte gratuit, when instinct decades of our lives. Babyhood, youth, maturity, old age, and death; is had its way, and reason and calculation of advantage had not intervened it not only too easy to fancy that the several ages of man correspond to to mask the personality. Such actions bubbling spontaneously out of the the time table of the sun, and that the same cosmic accident that set this unsuspected caves of personality are of its distilled essence. They mark earth spinning in space governs the birth, growth, decay, and death of the real moments of life when nothing of convention or habit or interest each individual that lives under the sun? Time, what is Time? is allowed to intervene, when the leaden hand of inhibition for a moment is lifted, and one's act is in full accord with the movement of And personality--that elusive thing that we call character, life itself. Pirandello leaves the question of personality unanswered and infancy and blooming youth and doddering age--is each stage like a unanswerable. Man is a perpetual actor, with unpredictable and moment of clock time, a pause of a pendulum that marks the end of one incalculable roles prompted by a hidden and perpetual urge like the swing and the beginning of its return? Is the baby grasping at its bottle wind or currents of the sea. Life, reality, and true personality-- who the same personality, only altered by the rhythm of time, as the old man shall define the undefinable? grasping at his feeble hold on life? What has time to do with personality? Does it in its rhythm transform the baby into the youth, It is an interesting question, this, what is the fundamental real in mature youth, and finally plant the seeds of decay, old age, and death? life and personality, the thing that isolates one from the panorama of Is it all the same personality, as it is the same yet changing earth that events and gives uniqueness to one's experience--the quest of the 'I' that spins on its axis, revolves about the sun, and with its parent pursues its is ever striving to find itself in the--welter of existence. It might be unknown adventure into the depths of cosmic space? These are given one to suspect that even the lonely ant of a perfect ant hill, when interesting questions. Are they insoluble? his wanderings have carried him to an Odyssey of strange adventure, feels the thrill of this uniqueness and wonders how far his 'I' differs To be sure, there is the identical yet changing physical body, from the corporate mass of encrusted habit that is the 'I'-ness of his baby, youth, man, that, though never the same, has its continuous life conventional life. Like the suddenly awakened lonely ant, how many of history, a center of radiating activity and yet always restlessly the same. us have at times felt that in the growing organized automaton that He is John Smith when he gulps his surprise at the ceremony of modern mechanized life has become, there must be moments when christening, he is John Smith when, rich in years and impoverished in personality stands revealed in its essence. These moments must be free, body, he slips under the cover of his tombstone. Yes, in spite of the they must be of the substance of reality. Where are these moments, and changes in the grouping and number of the physical atoms that go to how can they be discovered? For in their discovery man may find also make his recognizable self, there is something(103)organically unique an exceeding joy, and a peace and harmony that the world without can and abiding in the objective thing in measurable space and time that by never give.(102) something more than a convention we call John Smith. He is; he has, like the plot of a tragedy or comedy, a beginning, middle, and ending.

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He can always be physically measured, labeled, and identified. His statistical accuracy, they take no cognizance of the contours of the reality is as concrete and as questionable as any fact in nature, and as landscape, the twists and turns and backtrackings and general confusion subject to the laws of physics and chemistry. We know what we are that a railroad line must be in a rough country--diving underground, speaking of when his physical existence is in question. leaping chasms, writhing its way to its destination. But the railroad has one obvious advantage over character, it has at least an obvious But the mind of John Smith is a very different matter. Of this no destination. Character may or may not. But its devious waywardness one is directly conscious save John Smith himself. And it is of this would confuse even the most skilful of railroad map makers. And does above all that we speak when we use the terms personality and it have a destination? Or is it more like an underground restless body of character. Reality here, if we must use the word, is something very water, breaking out suddenly into the sunlight, as purposeful as an different from the concrete convincingness of arms, torso, and legs that artesian spring? And when we turn it to useful purposes, like the can be measured in space and time. If this has a beginning, middle, and irrigation engineer confining it in flumes and diverting it that distant ending, it must be something wholly different from birth, maturity, and regions may be fruitful, are we not hiding under the mask of purpose its decay, whose story can be measured by the rhythm of a pendulum. If it divine and spontaneous reality, making of it a thing mechanical and has a plot it must be like the plot of a tragedy in art, where there are the subject again to time? moments of intense action and eloquence separated by abysses of insignificance and silence. Who can measure by the clicking of a clock More than this, is not the increasing mechanization of modern the agony that was Macbeth or Othello? Here is something that defies life making rare and more rare the emergence of this personality? The the analysis of time and is of the nature of the eternal. automatic adjustments and conventions by which we all live are the ready-made responses we learn to make to life so that we may carry on It is in intense moments like these, wholly unpremeditated, that with the least of friction and greatest efficiency. But because they are Gide or Pirandello is attempting to discover the secret of personality, its made for us, they express only in a mechanical formula anyone's naked reality when the covering mask has been temporarily removed. individual character or personality. How then can they be real? To Moments like those in which Hamlet with unpremeditated unconcern think of life as made up exclusively of such unrealities leaves little discovers the treachery of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, or with utter room for thought of human freedom or(105)dignity. Contemporary abandon throws himself into the grave of Ophelia. This is the real literature has joined, quite reasonably one can think, in a wail of Hamlet to Gide; the philosophical Hamlet of the gravediggers' scene, or protest. T. S. Eliot will call our culture and our the calculating Hamlet playing cat and mouse with the King, is only his contemporaries Hollow Men: protective mask and as unreal. To Proust, however, there will be quite another(104) region than that of action where we may discover this Shape without form, shade without color, Paralyzed force, elusive and Protean reality. gesture without motion.

But one word more, in discussing the essence of personality, Indeed it has become quite conventional for us to feel that in this underlying reality that is the 'I'-ness of each, there are two pitfalls these our days the essential realities of personality have been lost in the into which one can only too easily stumble. The so-called 'analysis' of comforts and massed habits of civilized life. We have perfect character that much of our study of fiction has encouraged tends only organization and almost achieved standardization, and the loss of the too readily to simplify character--much as a railroad map simplifies the vital motive in the individual. route between any two cities. Laid down as these must be with

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Or as Proust will put it, slavery of personality to Time, the time trees, have come to join you and keep you company (but singly, table against free movement, and a carefully devised statistical at any rate, for they were oldfashioned wall papers, on which convention against spontaneous reality. For organization and each rose was so distinct that it could have been picked if it had standardization are in effect the imposition of a calculated routine, and been real, and each bird could have been put in a cage and the eye of routine is always fixed on the face of the clock--the tamed) having none of the pretentious interior decoration of the inexorable rule of Time in our contemporary civilization. Life patterned rooms of the present day, in which, on a silver background, all on the statistics of a time table. Business with its inflexible code of the apple trees of Normandy stand out sharply in Japanese style, hours and weeks and days. Pleasure similarly reduced to the formulas to fill with fantasies the hours spent abed--that whole day I of a radio program, with the remorseless voice of the announcer calling remained in my room, which looked out on the beautiful the next movement. In all this regimentation of drilled and rehearsed verdure of the estate and the lilacs at the entrance, on the tall monotony we pass our lives, with ever less and less opportunity to hear trees at the water's edge, their green foliage glistening in the the still small voice of the real personality within. For its movements sunlight, and on the forest of Méséglise. are not in clock time; to it a moment can be fraught, like Dante's, with the vision of Eternity, and to it a year may be no more than a passing This does not pretend to be a description giving the recipe of a shadow on the dial. It is this contemporary discomfort, a sense that place, a panorama, in order that a conventional landscape painter might something essential is being lost, that gives significance to the struggle follow directions and put the scene together. Much rather it is the way of Marcel Proust to discover the essential and real under the statistical the place sensuously awoke in the memory of the artist, sentient image and conventional, and thus to find freedom and happiness. It was to be calling up sentient image, until this whole was complete. Literally one a return to the depths of our own selves, where reality lies buried and feels, sees, tastes, and smells his way through Proust's novels. unknown to us. This is the problem for every individual. But it is for Curiously, only at rare intervals does one hear.(107) the artist first to make the discovery and communicate (106)it to others. The task is none too easy. 'Real books must be the product, not of Reading Proust, thus, is to call into intense activity all of the broad daylight and small talk but of darkness and silence.' varied sense responses to life. And this is a power that most find rather difficult to awaken. We want our sense responses given to us easy and Marcel Proust is not an easy writer. Concerned more with 'the ready made, and none too complicated. But here is Proust. Rosy life of the mind' than with action, his very sentences have the sinuous, candlelight--we let it go at that--by him is called 'the twilight of a labyrinthine, and apparent aimlessness of a stream lost in a tropical flower.' Where has the magic power of the sense of smell been better morass. They have nothing in common with the direct and efficient displayed? To most now it is an atrophied sense with the most abjectly utterance of everyday time-table life. Take this opening sentence from limited range; but once it was the rival of sight. his last volume: Before I went in to wish my aunt good day I would be kept The whole day long, in that rather too countrified house at waiting a little time in the outer room, where the sun, a wintry Tansonville, which had the air merely of a place to rest in when sun still, had crept in to warm itself before the fire, lighted out for a stroll or during a shower, one of those houses in which already between its two brick sides and plastering all the room every drawing-room gives the effect of a summerhouse, and and everything in it with a smell of soot, making the room like where, in the bedrooms, on the wall paper of one the roses of one of those great open hearths which one finds in the country, the garden, and on the wall paper of the other the birds from the or one of the canopied mantelpieces in old castles under which

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one sits hoping that in the world outside it is raining or Marcel, the narrator and chief character, ever does anything or earns an snowing, hoping almost for a catastrophic deluge to add the achievement. But he is not like Joyce, following the train that makes up romance of shelter and security to the comfort of a snug retreat; the annoying, humorless, recital of significance and insignificance that I would turn to and fro between the prayer-desk and the is the Ulysses. This reveals the complete disintegration of personality stamped velvet armchairs, each one always draped in its into an unconnected flux of undistinguished mental experience, the crocheted anti-macassar, while the fire, baking like a pie the utterly raw material of life. This is the chief criticism that one can bring appetising smells with which the air of the room was thickly against this undistinguished novel. It is like gazing upon a landscape clotted, which the dewy and sunny freshness of the morning had where all the details have equal significance or insignificance, where already 'raised' and started to 'set,' puffed them and glazed them the blowing of one's nose is as important as the thrill of love. But and fluted them and swelled them into an invisible though not beyond the fact that both Joyce and Proust are concerned with the impalpable country cake, an immense puff-pastry, in which, movement of the mind, there is between them all the difference in the barely waiting to savour the crustier, more delicate, more world. It is precisely this difference between the significant and the respectable, but also drier smells of the cupboard, the chest-of- insignificant that Proust is engaged to explore. He finds the secret in drawers, and the patterned wallpaper I always returned with an memory, but memory quite disassociated from Time, as we count its unconfessed gluttony to bury myself in the nondescript, hours.It would be interesting, were it possible here, to relate this resinous, dull, indigestible, and fruity smell of the flowered practice of Proust to the theory of Bergson on time and memory in the quilt. two books of his that preceded the appearance of Proust's sequence of novels: Time and Free Will and Creative Evolution. It is the former that And who of us can touch and taste silence? Milton's is probably the more significant. For example the importance of a 'smoothing the raven down of darkness till it smiled' was sentence like this to Proust's method: 'Hence there are finally two literary imagery of the first magnitude. Proust finds this different selves, one of which is, as itwere, the external projection of symphony of odors 'saturated with the fine bouquet of a silence the other, its spatial and, so to speak, social representation. We reach so nourishing, so succulent'; and Proust is a glutton for literary the former by deep introspection, which leads us to grasp our inner imagery.(108) states as living things, constantly becoming, as states not amenable to measure, which permeate one another and of which the succession in Perhaps these long sentences and sense impressions are difficult duration has nothing in common with juxtaposition in homogeneous to read, but the experiences also were difficult for the author; they are space. But the moments at which we thus grasp are rare, and that is just to him the ultimate reality, 'the only reality that exists for each of us, why we are rarely free. The greater part of the time we live outside our own sensitiveness to impressions.' To awaken these impressions in ourselves, hardly perceiving anything of ourselves but our own ghost, a a reader, to call up in him the sensitive memory where these lie stored, colourless shadow which pure duration projects into homogeneous demands a style leisurely, yet scrupulously exact, and calling for design space.'But the differences between Proust and Bergson are probably very different from that of mere logical description. even more significant than their similarities. For it is not the flux, the undifferentiated movement of pure time and ultimate reality that Proust Again, contrary to what has been written and said, Proust is not, attempts to capture. For him memory does not arrest time, but abolishes like James Joyce or even Virginia Woolf, following the 'stream of it, and it is not the flux that he captures, as does Joyce in Ulysses, but consciousness.' To be sure his adventures are all of them underground something to him far more precious and eternally stable.(109) adventures of the mind. None of his characters, and least of all he,

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But Proust's memory is a very different thing from the memory Proust, like all of us, sensed the difficulty of allowing these as we think of it in the memoranda of diaries or the statistical record of buried ghosts again to be real, and past experience to be even more doings that we for convenience file away for reference. 'What were you vital than it was when new and fresh, because now it has been fused doing at twelve o'clock on the thirtieth of June, last year? Such a with the vital present. He felt its call as it strove to awaken to new question might be able to elicit a very definitely detailed answer, such consciousness and stretch to capacity its power of sensuous response. 'I as an attorney or jury might find satisfactory for an alibi. Such useful felt that I was not penetrating to the full depth of my impression, that details are precisely similar to the railroad time table that tells you the something more lay behind that mobility, that luminosity, something exact hour of the arrival and departure of trains; and without them all of which they seemed at once to contain and conceal.' Yet when once the the practical necessities of life would be thrown into unremediable depths had given up part of their treasure of memory, then the power of confusion. But can one call up the special sensations and images, fresh exploring to the full its rich significance became a flight into a known and immediate and vital, of that day in June, with its full background and controllable region. 'Like an aviator who has been laboriously into which all sense details fall into perfect place? At times like these rolling along the ground, and then suddenly takes off, I rose slowly the past lives again in the present, and the present in the past. Indeed toward the heights of memories past.' Then the present impressions when once past and present thus fuse, each has lost its place in the which would awaken this new consciousness, with their 'mobility,' their calendar, the time table has telescoped into a single entry, and for this 'luminosity,' as though under Ali Baba's magic spell, were 'ready to one moment time was, is, and is no more. open, to yield up the secret treasure of which they were themselves no more than the outer covering.' It is hard to capture these moments of intense living at the same time in the past and the present. The immediate causes or stimuli that In these magic moments to Proust occur the revelation strive to call them up, though strong, may not be quite clear enough, or of(111)true personality, the ultimate reality of self. Recent psychology we not quite adept enough to follow the clue. I know a certain odor that since Freud and Jung has made us familiar--perhaps unpleasantly comes in the fall, at the time of burning leaves, and a certain(110)smell familiar--with the story of the subconscious self that lies buried under of freshly sawed pine, that are full of certain vague reminiscence, but the heavy inhibition of consciousness. How much of human life lies their clue I have never been able to follow to the experience in below the level that can be reached by conscious thought? The story of subconscious memory that begs to be released and called into present its significance in relation to habit and behavior can never be fully told. consciousness; something I know it is from very early childhood, but Out of its depths arise those stronger impulses or instincts that lay turn as I will to the past, the memory refuses to arise. So it is, I suspect, down the lines of conduct, whether for good or for evil; sinister or with most. Most have heard the knocking at the gate of the present by benevolent movements, uncontrollable and unpredictable, but all the ghosts of the past, living ghosts astir, longing to arise and converse profoundly the secret and inexorable voice of self. In normal or routine with the present, only the load of the present is too strong, the times this voice may not be heard, and the self conforms perfectly to gravestones under which we bury the past are too heavy; and memory the prescribed and predictable code; but given the right occasion, the becomes only its statistical epitaph, which tells of the practical trapdoor is sprung and out of these unsuspected depths, like unbidden historical data of our lives--that at seven we had a siege of chicken pox ghosts, arise the new and unsuspected motives, and the personality that kept us indoors, and we missed the opportunity to use the new sled stands transformed and sometimes unrecognizable. that Santa had brought at Christmas. Such was the transformation, in Euripides' play Iphigenia at Aulis, that came over the young Iphigenia when she learned the

49 dreadful fate that the lords of Greece had decreed for her. Brought in First World War sometimes has less significance to Proust than the joy to Aulis with her mother by the lure of a marriage to Achilles, the glimpses he can catch as he gazes into his past. prince of Greek heroes, she suddenly learns that it is a very different celebration in which she is to play a part. She must be sacrificed, and But at the top, those who have created for themselves an by a father's hand, on the altar to a revengeful goddess, in order that the enveloping inner life, pay little heed to the importance of current Greek expedition may have a favorable wind for Troy. First she cringes events. What alters profoundly the course of their thinking is much with fear, and embraces the knees of her father in terror; and then when more something which seems to be of no importance in itself and yet there might be a rescue, brave and proud she marches to her doom. which reverses the order of time for them, making them live over again Some hidden well of pride and courage, some inheritance from the an earlier period of their life. The song of a bird in the park of past, has suddenly been opened and its potency disclosed. And Montboissier, a breeze laden with the scent of mignonette, Iphigenia, had time for thought been permitted, would have been the areobviously incidents of less importance than the outstanding dates of last to recognize her new and real but unsuspected personality. the Revolution and the Empire. Yet they inspired Chateaubriand in his Memoires d'Outre-tombe to write pages of an infinitely greater Great literature is full of these occasions, these 'impressions' value.(113) (112)as Proust calls them, that reveal true personality to itself and to others. Perhaps of all great authors Shakespeare is the most alert to the So he set out in his series of novels on the search for the past, significance of these mysterious depths from which on occasion our and only after a diligent and baffled quest did he succeed, as he real selves emerge, and to the 'laws' of their emergence. What a describes it in the last volume of the sequence, in achieving its stranger the stricken Macbeth is to his wife--even more to himself; how recapture.The seven novels of the sequence have all the general title-- completely Lear baffles all who have long known him; how Othello Remembrance of Things Past (A la Recherche du Temps Perdu). Each denies his early and habitual simple-mindedness and generosity. This novel has also its separate title, which in English translation has been mysterious region of the subconscious and its significance for behavior called: have long been known to great art. 1. Swann's Way (Du Côté de chez Swann) The new psychology is not so new except in its terminology and 2. Within a Budding Grove (A l'Ombre des Jeunes Filles en technique, and in making its discoveries available for relieving Fleurs) suffering. We are learning, as Proust tells us he learned, to be a little 3. The Guermantes' Way (Le Côté de Guermantes) more expert in discovering the keys that unlock the hidden trap-doors 4. Cities of the Plain (Sodome et Gomorrhe) that conceal the living but yet unconscious past. 5. The Captive (La Prisonnière) 6. The Sweet Cheat Gone (Albertine disparue) (an unfortunate To Proust the richest store in the subconscious is memory, and English title) through its awakening comes the discovery of the real in human 7. The Past Recaptured (Le Temps retrouvé) personality. The present, to him, with its crowd of sensations and thoughts, is not real. It is only the superficies of life, the ripples on the In the nature of things some of these are better than others. Swann's surface, which seem terribly significant if one's view is only of the Way is perhaps best known to English readers, but alone gives little of surface, while below are the unplumbed depths filled with mysterious the scope of the novel sequence.His story covers three generations, and and invisible and sometimes sinister life. Even a war as great as the Swann's Way tells the story of his childhood and the figures with whom

50 his early memory is filled. We grow with him through the sequels to past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are maturity and then to age. The series closes with the years after the broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, Great War, almost just before the author's own death. But it is only in more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste the last novel that the design of the whole work is sketched and its of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, moral drawn. waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their Anything, even the least irrelevance, may be the occasion that will essence, the vast structure of recollection. spring the lock of the trap-door. Early in the novel Swann's Way, where he describes his own childhood in the little village of Combray, with its It is the immobility of the reason, the practical sense, and clock parks, streets, churches, and stream, he tells of the mystery of the time that make the world about us so seemingly waste, dead, and recapture. The past had vanished. But now it comes back, flooding, like immobile. 'Perhaps the immobility of the things about us is lent them a spring tide, all the wastes of the present and sparkling anew with the by the immobility of our thought as it contemplates them.' Break this freshness of new transport. immobility by awakening memory, and the world again suddenly becomes alive, alive with the past and the present vibrating in unison. And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to In The Guermantes' Way he describes the process as almost the manner recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is of a spider achieving a web. 'In this manner the reaches of my memory hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in little by little was filled with focal points which in their arrangement, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will their grouping each in relation to the other, in this weaving between give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on themselves threads more and more numerous, imitated those finished chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die. works of art, where not a single brush stroke is for itself, where each receives from the others its reason for being as it imposes its own on …And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little all.' Memory thus in itself becomes a work of art, rich, organic, and crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because complete. It reveals the reality beneath the(115) appearance, for it on those mornings I did not go out before (114)churchtime), when I transmutes the appearance as it fuses it with the treasure-house of the went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to past. give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind The most interesting and significant things in Proust are his before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the many and illuminating descriptions of how the past was recaptured. interval, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks' windows, Time and again he comes back to the apparently trivial occurrences, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take like the taste and smell of this innocent little cake of his childhood, that its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those sprung the heavy locks and slowly the huge panorama of the past, like a memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now released spirit, emerged from forgotten depths and flooded his whole survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things, including that being. Again in The Past Recaptured there were two of the most trivial of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, of accidents that brought the illumination of the events that followed religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as his boyhood, and furnished the memory of the lost sequels to the story to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to of his boyhood. resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a long-distant

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It is now during the years after the war. The author, the I, sensation I had once felt as I stood on two uneven flagstones in the Proust, has returned to a changed Paris after years in an infirmary. baptistry of Saint Mark's, and with that sensation came all the others Time has laid a heavy hand on all his acquaintances. Those whom he connected with it that day, which had been waiting in their proper place had known in his boyhood, and who furnished the memory of the in the series of forgotten days, until a sudden happening had sequels to the story of his boyhood, are now in old age vainly striving imperiously commanded them to come forth . . . to carry on in the old traditions. The young are a generation he has hardly seen, the children of his own contemporaries, and between these But when I reached the second story, a butler asked me to step extremes, the people of his own age have been matured out of all for a moment into a small library adjoining the buffet, until the recognition. He is invited to a reception at the town house of the selection they were playing was finished, the Princess having forbidden Guermantes, the old aristocratic family that once dominated the social that the doors be opened while it was being played. At that very life of France. It has now fallen on days of fading glory, and moment a second signal came to reinforce the one I had received from newcomers with no past are pressing it hard in its claim to prestige. He the two uneven flagstones, and urged me to persevere in my task. What has just been shocked by the decay and disintegration that has made happened was that a servant, trying in vain to make no noise, struck a almost unrecognizable the once debonair Baron de Charlus; and now he spoon against a plate. The same kind of felicity as I had received from is standing at the entry to the palace, hesitating before announcing the uneven paving stones now came over me; the sensations were again himself. those of great heat, but entirely different, mingled with the odour of smoke, tempered by the cool fragrance of a forest setting, and I Again he gets the signal, this time twice, as before when he recognized that what seemed to me so delightful was the very row of tasted the little cake dipped in lime-flower tea. He has just stepped trees which I had found it wearisome to study and describe and which, upon an uneven pavement. This gives the memory of one of the in a sort of hallucination, I thought now stood before me as I uncorked sequences that are his long work. A(116)moment later comes the the bottle of beer I had with me in the railway carriage, the sound of the second signal. He has just entered the Guermantes' mansion. It is the spoon striking the plate having given me--until I came to myself again- prelude to another movement in the story of the orbit of his life and of -the illusion(117)of the very similar noise of the hammer of a workman those who had crossed it. who had made some repairs to a wheel while our train stopped before that little clump of trees. I stood there, swaying back and forth, as I had done a moment before, one foot on the higher stone and the other on the lower, The revelation comes with a thrill of exhilaration, like a fresh indifferent to the possible amusement of the large crowd of chauffeurs. wind from the mountains when one has been living in the crowded Each time that I merely repeated the action physically, the effort was in commonplace. It is a refreshing air, 'refreshing just because we have vain; but I forgot the Guermantes' reception and succeeded in breathed it once before.' It is the pure air 'that the poets have vainly recapturing the sensation I had felt the instant I placed my feet in that tried to find in Paradise, whereas it could not convey that profound position, again the dazzling, elusive vision brushed me with its wings, sensation of renewal if it had not already been breathed, for the only as if to say, 'Seize me in my flight, if you have the power, and try to true paradise is always the paradise we have lost.' And he draws an solve the riddle of happiness I propound to you.' And almost enjoyment from the renewal quite different from the enjoyment of the immediately I recognized it; it was , about which my efforts at original experience of which these memories are now the real essence. description and the supposed 'snapshots' taken by my memory had Then the mind was perhaps too fatigued, too encumbered to taste their never yielded me anything, but which was brought back to me by the full sensuous savor. Now they come disencumbered of all save their

52 abiding essence, and thus flooding the mind make complete the But again there is nothing new or revolutionary in this happiness of this new and abiding moment. discovery by Proust. Dante's vision of The Divine Comedy is a succession of such imaginative moments of eternal value, with a range Why this happiness? Because in this vivid sentient moment from the depths to the heights of achievable human experience. In time has been abolished, the clock of the mind that marks the rhythm of these, as again did Proust, he fused his own past with the past of all the hours is silent, and the moment is eternal. Its qualities are humanity. Only Dante does not stop to inquire, as does the independent of time as they are of formal relationship. They are as experimental psychologist, just what morsel of food it was, or the odor organically a whole as a flower or a perfume. Here the past and the of what flower, that sent his imagination backward until he again had present have fused, the individual with feet planted in the present and the comradeship of his beloved Virgil or the ecstasy of his radiant surrounded with its circumstance is viewing through its medium the Beatrice. All great literature in its highest moments are thus both panorama of the past, and both in the vivid moment of consciousness intimately personal and confer upon the author the sense of are indistinguishable. It is as though one were witnessing a cinema of immortality. These moments because they have thus been intensely more than one reel, where the multiple images blend so perfectly that vivid are of the nature of the eternal. And because they have been one is unaware of their different source. More than this, during the adequately set down in prose and verse, on the adequate reader they sentient moment, as Proust lived it, even all sense of duration is again confer the blessings of immortality; for they too defy time and suspended. Of such to him is the nature of the essence of reality, it is seasons, immobilized as they are for all eternity.Saint Augustine long timeless; and it is to the study of these moments that he now devotes before in his Confessions tells of his long study of memory and its his released imagination. surprising revelations. 'Great is the force of memory, excessive great, O my God; a large and infinite sanctuary, who shall penetrate to But there is even more reason for happiness. Being itsdepths?' He makes the effort, like Proust, and what is his discovery? time(118)less these moments are eternal and confer upon the Again like Proust's, it is a joyous discovery and the fulfilment of his beholder for the moment the experience of immortality. highest desires. 'Since therefore I learned to know thee, hast thou still kept in my memory; and there do I find thee, whenever I call thee to But let a sound already heard or an odour caught in bygone remembrance, and delight myself in thee. These be my holy delights years be sensed anew, simultaneously in the present and the past, real which thou hast bestowed upon me.' There is a difference between without being of the present moment, ideal but not abstract, and what the two found.(119) immediately the permanent essence of things, usually concealed, is set free and our true self, which had long seemed dead but was not dead in Such moments bring happiness to Proust because they are a other ways, awakes, takes on fresh life as it receives the celestial revelation of the real personality, which otherwise is always masked nourishment brought to it. A single minute released from the under the commonplace of routine time. But is it always of the same chronological order of time has re-created in us the human being personality? For personality is to Proust only the 'conglomerate of similarly released, in order that he may sense that minute. And one sensations' revealed in the lightning flash of these sentient moments. comprehends readily how such a one can be confident in his joy; even But it is only of 'the person we then were.' 'But let me see some object though the mere taste of a madeleine does not seem to contain logical from another bygone time and a different young man will arise within justification for this joy, it is easy to understand that the word 'death' me. And my inner self of today is merely an abandoned quarry which should have no meaning for him; situated outside the scope of time, believes that all the marble it contains is uniform and monotonous, but what could he fear from the future? out of which each remembrance, like a Greek sculptor, carves

53 innumerable statues.' So it will be with all excursions into the sentient supersensitiveness that may be defended in a creature like a jellyfish memories of the past. 'I am not the "I" who saw them and must give that is always at the mercy of its environment? place to the "I" which I was at that time in order that he may call forth the thing he knew, which my present self does not know at all.' It is this that makes most of the motives that govern his various characters more or less morbid. I am not here thinking of his careful So much then for the real in personality. It is not a chameleon and detailed descriptions of sexual perversions, the otherwise healthy taking color from circumstance, but a succession of sentient moments; and admirable Robert de Saint Loup, and the slowly disintegrating it is ever created anew as in memory it captures the past. It is not, as in Baron de Charlus. There is nothing in recent literature that I have read Gide, revealed in action, but in the quality of its sensitiveness, in its that describes with more vividness the growing power that this passive receptivity to the ebb and flow of memory. It is these that bring perversion acquires until its victim in impotent old age dodders while the happiness that its revelation ensures; mere action or physical he vainly strives to indulge. Any form of healthy activity rather than enjoyment on the other hand are always succeeded by disappointment, this! It is not these more dramatic forms of morbidity, and more and this is the sign of their base alloy. repulsive, that I have in mind. But to him even love is morbid and a disease. His own for Albertine, for instance. But in the first volume of And if I recapitulated the disappointments in my life, as far as it the series, in the love of Swann for the cocotte Odette, there is a had been lived, which led me to believe that its real essence must lie complete absence of any of the motives a healthy imagination somewhere else than in action, and compared different associates with passion, even in its most physical forms. It is disappointments, but not in a haphazard manner or merely following a(121)disease, malignant and consciously malign, a reptilian spell that the vicissitudes of my existence, I came to realize clearly(120)that has cast its power over its victim, and he is impotent. It is a mortal disappointment in a journey and disappointment in a love affair were ailment that at first gives some thrills of pleasure, then like a drug habit not different in themselves but merely the different aspects assumed in becomes its own motive for the addict's doom. varying situations by our inability to find our real selves in physical enjoyment or material activity. All art is autobiography. So Marcel Proust has it in the last volume of his series. No artist can get outside of his own memories; There is something of the attitude of the drug addict in this and those of this Frenchman were not what one would call normal. desire--is there not?--to reduce life to a succession of sensuously rich There was something morbid in the life, even the external life, of this memories of things past. A discriminating French critic, Raymond author, whose highest dread was sunlight and fresh air. Is it then any Fernandez, has written: ' Proust suffered from a complete wonder that in the reality he discovers for us, and which he transfers to powerlessness to achieve consciousness of life other than under the canvas of his novels, there is likewise so little of the invigorating conditions of purely passive receptivity.' True. But is there not more and the lifegiving? For him likewise the reader of a work of art reads that can be laid to his charge? Did he not encourage a sensitive into it always nothing more than the reader's own autobiography--his alertness to these visions of the past to an extent that might more own memories of things past. For this reason, if for no other, many a adequately be described as morbid? A morbid exploiting of his reader whose life has in it something of the sun and the outdoors, finds sensuous past. Thus he finds personality an incoherent sequence of that Proust's reality, though ever so real, is for him also exotic and almost dream states, and experience an incoherence of kaleidoscopic having the perfume of the hospital and death chamber. Is not the impressions. Is not this a sign of a certain type of psychic morbidity, a criticism then by Aldous Huxley, though unfair, at least significant?

54

'How I hate old Proust! Really detest him.' And with a richly came to an end with the First World War. As Gide described one of its comic eloquence he proceeded to evoke the vision of that asthmatic symptoms, Proust psychoanalyzed it and recorded in seven novels the seeker of lost time squatting, horribly white and flabby, with breasts result of his investigation.(123) almost female but fledged with long black hairs, for ever squatting in the tepid bath of his remembered past. And all the stale soap suds of (124) countless previous washings floated around him, all the accumulated dirt of years lay crusty on the sides of the tub or hung in dark suspension in the water. And there he sat, a pale repellent invalid, THE NEW TRAGEDY VII taking up spongefuls of his own thick soup and squeezing it over his face, scooping up cupfuls of it and appreciatively rolling the grey and EUGENE O'NEILL gritty liquor round his mouth, gargling, rinsing his nostrils with it, like a pious Hindu in the Ganges . . . 'First it was atheism unadorned. Then it was atheism wedded to Socialism. But Socialism proved too weak-kneed a mate, and the next I It is the death of an old order that Marcel Proust so cunningly heard Atheism was living in free love with Anarchism, with a curse of devises and lives to the life. We perhaps too glibly use the word Nietzsche to bless the union. And then came the Bolshevik dawn, and decadent. If it has any meaning it must associate (122)itself with a life he greeted that with unholy howls of glee and wrote me he had found a that has lost its motive for existence and is seeking for something congenial home at last in the bosom of Karl Marx. He was particularly spurious, the search for the sensation that accompanies action rather delighted when he thought they'd abolished love and marriage, and he than for the action, the exploiting of the emotion rather than of the couldn't contain himself when the news came they'd turned naughty genuine impulse. And morbidity and illness sharpen sensations and school boys and were throwing spitballs at Almighty God and had give an added poignancy to emotion. Thus Proust's characters live on supplanted him with the slave-owning State--the most grotesque god the fringes of action, in the regions of their accompanying emotions that ever came out of Asia . . .' and sensations. Even an event like the World War gives only one minor character a generous impulse. It is the beauty of the aeroplanes and the 'A new discipline of life will spring into being, a new will and searchlights that impresses Proust, that and the thrill that accompanies power to live, a new ideal to measure the value of our lives by . . . We the detonation of bombs. His books are almost a celebration of the need, above all, to learn again to believe in the possibility of nobility of ecstasy of ill-health. spirit in ourselves.'

To those to whom an illness is ecstasy the healthy seems banal DAYS WITHOUT END and unreal. For sound health has little time to inquire into mental states because a wholesome nature is unconscious of nerves, ganglia, and 'NOBILITY of spirit'--to be able again to believe in one's self, to have a glands. It is only too easy for the sensitively morbid to feel a contempt firm purpose in life, 'a will and power to live,' all this is the recurrent for those who are not blessed with the luxury of illness. But as a painter theme in nearly all the plays of Eugene O'Neill. But at the same time he of this illness, though he himself was afflicted with the malady, Proust has also found its recipe to be as elusive as all the vagaries and new became also one of the most penetrating critics of a degenerate society purposes of the generation after the war. There is perhaps a little of the of men and women like himself. Better, perhaps because he went to the dramatist's autobiography in the words his priest uncle addressed to roots of the disease, he has written the epic of the real de siècle that bewildered John Loving, and which stand as one motto for this chapter. To say that he has at last found a final recipe for living is to speak 55 against the evidence. For each new play has broken new ground, and nerves, which in Europe unfortunately were from the close of the war revealed a new purpose. What will be the end of the story? pitifully exposed. We could afford to be spectators, it couldn't be otherwise, intellectually interested, devotedly even, but as amateurs. Perhaps, and probably, this almost amateur readiness to Europe, on the contrary, lived and bled, while it speculated and wrote. undertake a new doctrine is the most American trait in Eugene O'Neill, that and a certain courage--even rashness--to (125)proclaim it. As an And O'Neill has even more magnificent plans for the future. (126)His American, O'Neill knows there is something wrong with the world; but biographer and critic, Mr. Clark, reports that he is planning a cycle of it is rather more of the intellectual knowledge of the observer than the plays that will be 'something in the style of War and Peace or Jean deeply felt personal experience of the participator. Almost any one of Christophe.' And one must be on one's guard against stamping such a us in the past twenty years might have written this: remark as idle boasting, for we remember Strange Interlude and Mourning Becomes Electra. The dramatist may have the superlative It is a symbolical and factual biography of what is happening in surprise in store. But also how superbly American is its rash boldness. a large section of the American (and not only American) soul But when it comes it will be different from other announced magna right now. It [the play Dynamo] is really the first play of a opera, War and Peace or Jean Christophe or even Jules Romains Men trilogy that will dig at the roots of the sickness of today as I feel of Good Will. Before it can be set beside these the American dramatist it--the death of an old God and the failure of science and will have to discover, define, and live, yes even suffer for, his faith. materialism to give any satisfying new one for the surviving Has Mr. O'Neill yet discovered a faith to whose service he can devote primitive religious instinct to find a meaning for life in, and to his talent? comfort its fears of death with. It seems to me that anyone trying to do big work nowadays must have this big subject But his work has shown interest in almost every variety of ideas behind all the little subjects of his plays or novels, or he is of these post-war decades. The strange esoteric fascination of his early simply scribbling around on the surface of things and has no plays, with their exotic South Sea atmosphere--a hangover after the more real status than a parlor entertainer. night's debauch of the War-- The Moon of the Caribbees and the other plays of the sea. Here is the escape motive, the desire to get away from Quite true and granted. Only Europe discovered the fact long it all, and yet the sinister impossibility of finding a paradise. He will before the war. And it is not always easy to discover this motive come back again and again to these romantic islands, 'where every in Mr. O'Neill's early dramas. prospect pleases and only man is vile,' in The Emperor Jones, in Mourning Becomes Electra. Then there is his proletarian tract, before Amateur readiness to undertake new ideas--and I use the words we in America had yet begun to talk about a special literature devoted in any but a derogatory sense--does not this describe the American to the class struggle, The Hairy Ape. It was more popular in Europe, attitude toward what has been called the 'contemporary problem'? For especially in Russia, where for a time it almost became a textbook. until quite recently it has not been, except for the few, an American Next came his studies in the new psychology, when his debt to problem. Fortunately perhaps for us, the relatively small personal Strindberg for a time seemed almost to threaten a bankruptcy: Desire sacrifice we made in the late war, the relative ease and comfort of Under the Elms, The Great God Brown. Freud, too, had much to do American life, and, until after the economic collapse, the relative with the new technique. But he shook himself free of his masters and absence of unemployment and the opportunity nearly all possessed for wrote Strange Interlude and Mourning Becomes Electra, and we had making a way, all of these things put a cuticle, as it were, above our

56 something new, genuinely personal, and a landmark in the history of leaped to life in the imagination of the audience, and the actor had little the American drama.(127) to do except appropriately to recite his lines and indulge in gesture. In tragedy the mask elevated the action above the common level of Most authors would have felt that they had arrived, that from humdrum life, and the actor became only the voice speaking through now on their career was given over to cultivating the new and rich the features that the best art could define. In a word, the mask as used field, especially as both plays were given instant recognition and were in Greece was to hide, so far as possible, the actor, and leave the widest even stage successes of the first magnitude. But O'Neill is never more possible scope to the art of the dramatist and sculptor. O'Neill uses the American than in his unwillingness to be satisfied with one mask, on the contrary, to assist the actor. It is his mask that is being achievement or two. First a turn again to Nietzsche and the translation used. So that when he puts on the mask it is to cut him off completely of the gospel of Zarathustra, Thus Spake Zarathustra, into the play from the personality he is representing when he speaks with features Lazarus Laughed. The story of this man raised from the dead has exposed. puzzled and intrigued more than one imagination.It would be interesting to contrast O'Neill and Pirandello in their treatment of this The old theatre had long known the use of asides, for the old theme. And the laughter of Lazarus marks a new achievement in purpose of expressing unspoken thoughts. But it had always been done the genesis and exodus of Eugene O'Neill. Later come Dynamo and in a manner to suggest natural convincingness, and they were always Days Without End, with the little comedy, Ah, Wilderness; how short, except when the actor was alone on the stage and might, like different in theme from anything we had had before. Is the O'Neill of Hamlet, lay bare his perplexity in a long soliloquy. But O'Neill has Days Without End the final O'Neill? He would be a brave critic who inserted them into the very heart of rapid dialogue, having a character would record a prophecy-- probably Mr. O'Neill himself does not speak twice, once in a voice meant to be heard on the stage by his know. Of one thing we may yet be sure. He is not satisfied--see his interlocutors, and once only for the audience. The one is his masked announcement of his magnum opus. What will be its theme? In word, as it were, and the other his true comment. Frequently these are consequence it is dangerous, and perhaps quite beside the mark, yet to quite contradictory. They do clutter up the play, slow down the speak of O'Neill's work--work obviously unfinished and its goal dialogue, and make it in one way a bit confusing to an untrained unpredictable. But he is the single most significant American of this audience. But they throw floods of light upon what is really happening post-war epoch. More than any other he does reflect the shifting in the minds of the characters. interests of America in the 'contemporary problem,' and his range is almost the complete American range. It would never do to omit O'Neill But perhaps more startling is the liberty he has taken with the in any assessment of the contemporary imagination that carries in its long-established length of the play. Three hours has always been table of assets such men as Romains, Mann, or Gide. thought to be about the limit of an audience's patience. Goethe, of course, wrote the second part of Faust, that is an epic in its length. But This is not the place to speak at any length of his technical Goethe's play has only been(129)acted as a celebration, a fiesta for experiments and innovations. For example, though he was not the first Goethe lovers, and not as an ordinary dramatic enterprise. There have to use the mask to give on the stage the effect of change in personality, been other long experiments. Then came Strange Interlude, as long as a yet he has used it in a manner that is quite novel. The Greeks used trilogy of Greek tragedies, to be followed by Mourning Becomes masks in tragedy and comedy(128)to define their characters; in comedy Electra, a trilogy itself and longer than the Greek, and one that will not to express and fix the comic type, the rogue, the boastful soldier, the permit any long intervals between its three parts. Our age has become courtesan, and the like. So soon as the mask appeared the character accustomed to the sesquipedalian novel; it now is being introduced to

57 an equally extended drama. The old dramatic canons will have to be re- greatness. Emperor Jones, once a porter, and fugitive from a penal examined and defined. O'Neill has done more than any other to help sentence, has now by his resourcefulness made himself master of all he confuse the distinction between the novel and the drama. Or would it surveys in an island in the Caribbean. He is Emperor and Dictator and be fairer to say that some of his dramas have themes that perhaps could all the islanders are his frightened subjects. To them he is the superb more successfully be treated in the more extended and freer form of the superman, equipped with supernatural powers, not to be wounded by an novel? ordinary weapon, and they cringe before him. He has come, almost, to believe in himself. Calmly he has provided against all contingencies. In spite of the changes that have come in O'Neill's ideas on life His treasure he has cached near the sea shore, and carefully and and its problems, all of his plays can be said to have one central theme. methodically he has surveyed a path to the shore through the forest, It is the persistent question that he has put to life, and as persistent has leaving himself supplies by the way, safe and secure for a quick been the variety of the answers: the why and the how of failure, and of getaway. He is utterly confident. the disintegration of personality that is the sign of failure. His characters are ever discovering the always imminent possibility of Now when the play opens his subjects have revolted. He is losing the way, of missing the motive that might give life a meaning alone in the palace, quite unperturbed yet in his loneliness. The signal and keep personality intact. In a word, how can one find, not success of the revolt, in unterrified daylight, the constant beat of the drums as perhaps, but the compensation of peace and happiness? Nearly all of the remote villages assemble, he scoffs at, and takes his time. There is his plays, and all of the more significant, have never lost sight of this the food in the forest, he knows the way in the dark. He will wait in central problem. He may have toyed with atheism and socialism--and leisure before he sets out. he has--but it has always been for its bearing on the life of the single individual. O'Neill never thinks in masses. His earlier plays dealt more But night in the forest is different, and the well-marked path specifically with the failure to find the way; his later, speaking more obscure, and behind and ever nearer the throb, throb of the menacing generally, have found some sort of answer that will bring some variety drums. His old superstitions and inherited fears of the supernatural of peace. What, then, does the American O'Neill have to give us as his awake, and he begins to see things. His acquired confidence and ideas on life? resourcefulness, his jauntiness,(131)where have they disappeared to, under the welter of age-old inherited instinct? But he can be killed--he Put in this way the problem is not uniquely contemporary at all. has told them-- only by a silver bullet. And he plunges forward, blindly It is as old as human nature. Our new science only(130)shifts the firing at phantoms, until at last, utterly lost and frantic, he himself fires ground and makes complacency and faith a little more difficult. It is the fated silver bullet. like having a house with a new perspective opened up by alterations in the landscape. New adjustments within must be made to bring both into The disintegration of the jaunty, successful Negro porter into a new harmony. the savage, cringing before the terror of darkness, is an interesting study in psychology. It is more; the audience, like the hero, is held in Perhaps the best, as well as the most famous, of his early plays the suspense of imaginative terror by the insistent throb of the drums is The Emperor Jones. In a way we have here something that suggests and the overwhelming uprush of the savage. Buried tradition, the ancient and Shakespearean tragedy. Simpler, to be sure, because the instinct that lies deep and perhaps forgotten, can be revived, given the former Negro porter is an elemental character quite, in comparison with appropriate stimulus; and of the nature of this coming no one can Macbeth or Oedipus. But the play also has the grand simplicity of real predict. But the effect here on Emperor Jones was tragic. Deep under

58 all his acquired confidence in himself, the Emperor was only a intensity of this passionate plea raises it above the sordid level of its primitive, fear-ridden savage, no different from his subjects. There was commonplace people--like Hauptmann's inconspicuous weavers--and nothing else--and lacking something instinctive to support him, he gives them kinship with the heroes of tragedy. reverted to type. America in those days was interested in primitive cults, and the theme of The Hairy Ape is only slightly different. But But Desire Under the Elms for its world took only the lesser O'Neill took the American interest, put life into it, gave it an esoteric folk of a village. There was little in it to tempt the easy reader to make setting, and made excellent drama. the application universal. In Strange Interlude and again in Mourning Becomes Electra this theme is given more than a rural or provincial There was a time, not long ago in years, but changes in fashion background. The first comes down to our own times and to people yet come rapidly in these our times, when the name of Freud was in every in their prime. The second, though the time is the American Civil War, headline and we talked of complexes and suppressed desires. We did strives to be as universal in its application to the New England tradition excellent comedy with that theme. O'Neill turned it into the most in America as the old Greek trilogy by Aeschylus was to the classic serious drama, even tragedy. How popular, for example, was Desire Greek. And both these plays are O'Neill at his technical best. We may Under the Elms, a sombre thing, filled, too, with his pet prejudice, the quarrel with the theme, we shall quarrel with his picture of New New England conscience. A prejudice, I suspect, due to his inheritance, England, but no one can deny to these two plays the birthright and which in spite of all his genius and flexibility he has never been of(133)power and persuasiveness. They are O'Neill at his best, perhaps able to overcome. It is only too easy, obvious to some perhaps, to think a mistaken best, but none the less significant. of the puritan New England conscience as the working of a Freudian complex, and its moral aspect only an ugly mask assumed to hide its But though these plays have Freud for their first inspiration, the still more ugly origins. This was to many the motive that made(132)the author has shaken himself partly free from his master. We become play popular, this and its uncompromising hardness. For the play was interested in the technique of the complexes, as in Pirandello we are written in the days when no one could use the word 'mid-Victorian' interested in the technique delusion uses to mask itself. But we also are without a sneer, and 'puritan' without a complacent smirk of release interested in something much more important, the personality of the from its supposed drab hypocrisy. To label it a puritan, mid-Victorian characters. And in this O'Neill is greater than Pirandello. All Freudian complex was voluptuous revenge, a far more gross one than Pirandello's characters are little more than personified ideas of the George Santayana took in The Last Puritan. mortal ailments that all human nature is afflicted with, and no more, and they are made expressly for the play in which they exhibit But the play is something more than a play about New England themselves. Even in imagination they never pass beyond the clinical and a stone cast at its supposed uncompromising ugliness. It is a play of walls of the drama. Not so with O'Neill: his characters stand forth in frustration; so will be most of his later ones. And frustration when their own right and proclaim themselves as personalities above and pushed to tragedy has a power at times that challenges admiration from beyond the scope of the action of the plays. They are not merely cases even the unwilling. There is something elemental here, a display of for the psychiatrist, they are interesting and human for themselves. We forces that move individuals even against their wills and almost without are warmly interested in their reaction to fate, not coolly participating their consciousness, that give a natural dignity even to the lowest. It is in a clinic. This warm sympathy with his characters O'Neill always has. an elemental protest against life which has not given human nature its They have taken charge of the situation, and their actions and reactions rightful human inheritance, a chance to find something greater than in consequence are sometimes surprising, and always convincing. Nor itself to which it can give loyal service. It is a plea for justice. The very does the American dramatist, as does the Italian, always project himself

59 into the play and insist on riding home on the moral--again as the be a comfort to get home--to be old and to be home again at clinical demonstrator who closes the demonstration with an exegesis. It last--to be in love with peace together--to love each other's is O'Neill who has used Freud, not Freud who has used O'Neill. peace --to sleep with peace together--!'

For example Strange Interlude, though it has for its theme the These are the main outlines of the play: again the disintegration repression of sex followed by a corresponding abandonment to sex, by of a personality by the sudden surge of unsuspected instinct. The no means confines itself to this single theme. A very considerable veneer of propriety--thin and perilous though apparently solid and well panorama of the war and post-war epoch is passed in review, and much founded--gives way, and something quite unsuspected rises and moves of it quite indirectly related to the main theme. It is as loose in plot as a swiftly toward tragedy. A strange interlude, strange but humanly Shakespearean history play. The heroine, the daughter of a highly convincing. How(135)shall the tossed, and apparently now quite conventional college professor, is engaged to be married to a irresponsible, discover peace and harmony? Will the quiet and matter- young(134)soldier about to leave for France. They discuss immediate of- fact affection of Charlie, so like the quiet and matter-of-fact marriage, but the father, selfishly cautious and thinking of possible affection of her now dead father, lay the ghosts of the past? A hurricane eventualities, persuades them to postpone the wedding till Gordon's too is an interlude, but it can also leave a world of desolation in its return. The young man honorably consents, and then is killed in battle. wake. Now the call of sex and the desire to give herself becomes overmastering and Nina as a nurse to invalided soldiers is as generous A much more daring experiment was Mourning Becomes as before she had been repressed. Electra.And here, because he has deliberately challenged comparison with the Greek, it is well to compare the different attitudes toward the So far the theme is purely Freudian, but the sequel is more plot of the Greek and the contemporary American. The modern veneer strange than what had gone before. She marries, but after the wedding of civilization has by no means deadened the call of outraged learns from a relative that there is insanity in her husband's family, and vengeance. The instinct is present and on call can come forth with to have children would be to pass on a curse to the next generation. Has overwhelming power. It did it in the play of Aeschylus--it does it again O'Neill here been guilty of admitting something really foreign to the in the play by O'Neill--but there is yet a very significant difference. (By theme, something arbitrary and quite accidental? In order to make the nearly all critics it has been assumed that O'Neill is following the sequel has he not dragged in something almost unconvincing in its tradition as set in the three plays by Aeschylus, that take up the three unexpectedness? But the result, again the sex complex, again chapters of the tragedy--Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers repressions, and inhibitions. And it is not until the end of the story, (Choephoroi), and The Furies (Eumenides). But there are plays also of when her son--a medical friend who knew the circumstances had Sophocles and Euripides on the story of Electra. It seems evident to me offered himself that she might have a child--is now ready for college that O'Neill is most indebted to Euripides. And, in particular, to one and his adventure with the unknown, that a sort of Indian Summer scene in Euripides, where there is a possibility of a suggestion that brings a mild substitute for peace: Electra was attracted by Aegisthus, the guilty paramour of her mother Clytemnestra. A free translation of this passage could have given the 'You're so restful, Charlie. I feel as if I were a girl again and you hint. This love in O'Neill is almost the central motive for the tragedy.) were my father and the Charlie of those days made into one. I wonder is our old garden the same? We'll pick flowers together The story of the ill-starred family of Agamemnon is a thriller. in the aging afternoons of spring and summer, won't we? It will The general of the Greek armies, and fortunate king and husband of the

60 regal Clytemnestra, when he set forth on the expedition against Troy undertaking. Sophocles' Electra is not O'Neill's. She is a soldier by fate, left behind him two smouldering fires of revenge. His father had been by nature of a quite different texture. But duty-- guilty of the blood of his own brother and nephews. One of the boys, Aegisthus, had been spared and was now growing to manhood with but Euripides' Electra comes nearest to the American. She one purpose in life--to shed the blood of his more fortunate kinsman. was(137)once in the years long ago, before her father's murder, sound But even more sinister was the pain he left in the heart of his wife, for and wholesome. But her mother's unnatural cruelty, inspired by fear for before sailing, to insure the success of the enterprise, Agamemnon had her own safety, and her mother's fascinated love for Aegisthus had been forced to slay his own daughter Iphigenia. During the long years tortured her youth into silent hatred. She has been married to a peasant, of the war, the(136)wife and the cousin can brood and plot, making that her seed cannot hope to inherit the kingdom. Now sullen and common cause in behalf of justice. Justice--the call is as old as human resolute, twisted with a moral resentment against her mother, she is nature. It's a wild kind of justice that this fierce and elemental woman biding the day. She has only one motive for living, Orestes and metes out to her unsuspecting husband when, ten years after, he returns revenge. Yet this is not all, for she is a richer personality than any in all as conqueror and hero from Troy. And a wild kind of justice that the Greek tragedy. When on the fatal day preparations are made for the fatherless children, Electra and Orestes, the girl and the boy, later mete sacrifice, she falters. Her mother comes, with love for her daughter out to their mother and her guilty partner. newly awakened, and Electra must whip her melting hatred into scorpion malevolence before she is ready for the deed. Yet Euripides' The Greek tragedians each treated the plot in his own way, heroine is sound; it is only old circumstance that has altered her, and shifting the motive to suit his interest and his understanding of human new circumstance almost restores the mother-loving child. nature. Aeschylus is not greatly interested in character, but in the human and humane institutions that can temper and bring reason to the O'Neill charges his characters at the beginning with the primitive call for revenge and justice. His characters are all morally and explosive that given the opportunity brings about the tragedy. None of mentally sound, but, driven by the elemental call for blood, loose them from General Mannon (Agamemnon) to Orin (Orestes) is passion on passion. Blood will have blood, though it be the blood of the fundamentally sound. The general's marriage to Christine was a folly, nearest in kin and a mother whose breasts first nourished the vengeful for temperamentally they are snow and fire. Orin has a truly morbid child. Only institutions of justice can transfer the call from the outraged love for his now morbid mother. Electra (Lavinia) is as morbidly in person to outraged society, so the victim can lay his burden on the love with her father. It is a family with a hundred motives for tragedy, shoulders of the law. So Aeschylus. And Aeschylus is least like the and needing only occasion to strike the spark. Even Captain Brant contemporary O'Neill. Sophocles is interested primarily in the moral (Aegisthus) is not of the Greek pattern, but a half- unwilling tool. His problem for the individual and its effect on personality. His Electra is at case against the family of General Mannon is petty and sordid in least sound morally and mentally; but loneliness and a brooding sense comparison with the feud that drove his Greek original. And the love of injustice have made her hard, hard and implacable. It is only when that mated him with Christine has more of a dash of contemporary she meets the brother she had heard is dead that the barriers of ice melt scandal than a touch of tragedy. Add to all this the hidden love of suddenly, and like a spring spate her true affectionate nature sweeps her Electra for Aegisthus, and we have in sum a Freudian story of sex, mind clear. Revenge is forgotten until by a warning attendant she is perverted in general, sound only where the plot is least tragic. And to called to a duty that now seems so foreign to her newly revealed nature. climax the climax, we have Electra transfer her unconscious sexual It is the mortal, tragic irony of Sophocles that a person so unfitted for hunger finally to her brother. It is all a pathetic tangle, that a competent the task should heroically bend her nature, by sheer will, to its physician might have(138)unravelled. But not so with the Greek. No

61 physician could have brought peace to the hearts of the Electras or Mourning Becomes Electra is O'Neill's high water mark, and of Clytemnestras or Orestes of the Attic theater. The call there was rather the new American tragedy. It may be, probably is, a blind alley; for for a competent police. without some vital moving faith in human personality itself or in some higher power that can give dignity to human endeavor there can be no O'Neill's play is powerful. It delineates in sharp detail the final peace. Tragedy when thus unrelieved becomes not much more than a disintegration of a whole family. But there was no soundness in them, brutal and meaningless fate, pathetically irrelevant for a well-meaning even from the beginning. Here we have rather one contemporary Nina, savage in its relentlessness for Electra. Had hope and peace come substitute for tragedy--tragedy with Fate, not as an ironic destiny, but to either it would have been as unhuman as their distress. In his later as a Freudian obsession, repression, the subliminal self suddenly work the American dramatist has taken another direction. coming into full control and sweeping blindly to destruction. It is tragedy with a formula from the new science of psychology. Its Can man discover peace? Is there a possible motive for life that inevitability is like that of an attack of cholera. It is not an ironical, will reconcile all conflict, bring harmony, and unlock even the malicious, and brutal world that crushes the flower of personality; brooding mystery of Death? What is Life? What is Death? The search rather it is psychological insufficiency within the personality, for which for an answer is the search for a faith, an active faith, not a consolation it is no more responsible than the host of a virulent baccilus, that for life or a compensation, but an inward force directing life and becomes its undoing. activity itself, something in itself spiritual, that science cannot measure into formulas, nor the psychologist define. It is an inward search for a In a way, after all, O'Neill might recall the optimism of treasure of the spirit, eternal and universal. How different this from the Aeschylus. To the stalwart Greek soldier, the reign of perfect law earlier O'Neill, and yet in its way quite consistent, for it is the very would remove all cause of tragedy. It was only the lack of adequate absence of a final goal in all his earlier answers to the contemporary moral institutions--these can be no better than the people that produce problem that drives him now to the answer of Religion. and work them. So O'Neill and many like him seem to feel that if only the expert psychiatrist could devise an adequate mental purge, all evils, 'Death is Life,' cries the newly arisen Lazarus to the astonished like those that led to the strange interlude or that destroyed the Mannon and questioning group of his old neighbors, and he laughed, laughed household, could be avoided. Faith in an ultimate scientific cure, long and musically, and contagiously, as the world was to discover. His pinning one's faith to the doctor. laughter is the answer and the challenge of Life to Death.

All this is an easy and obvious criticism that does not quite dig The story of Lazarus who was raised from the dead has long to the roots and discover the true O'Neill. Every one of the characters in intrigued the imagination. What had he seen during those three days this play has also a personal quarrel with fate. It is this, as in all of his while his body was swathed in the tomb and(140)his spirit free to plays, that has given the passionate intensity to this old story of a question Eternity? This has been a favorite theme, and good family feud. Though the motives have been transformed, as must be in dissertations might be written on the repeated efforts to translate this our century, the old tragic resentment is there and the ancient plea Lazarus' experience into drama and story. O'Neill Lazarus Laughed is a for justice. To those who must see in life a formal pattern, their words splendid experiment. But there is as much Nietzsche as O'Neill, and will always be wild and whirling. But so(139)also is a tempest. It is the Lazarus at times speaks almost the words of the prophet Zarathustra. power of this tempest of unexpected emotion that comes very close to (See Nietzsche'sThus Spake Zarathustra, or Zoroaster. He is the half- awakening the pity and terror of orthodox tragedy. mythical founder of the pre-Islamic religion of Persia.)

62

Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted? He the once well-known romantic cosmic emotion that gave Shelley his who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic poetry, and behind it the romantic philosophy of pantheism. plays and tragic realities. The contagion of this romantic joy in life. It transforms those . . . I should only believe in a God that would know how to that listen to Lazarus' laughter; and they are many and various. The . Greeks in Athens, who are about to revolt against the sombre rule of the Romans, catch its infection even before Lazarus appears, and in . . . Now am I light, now do I fly; now do I see myself under their multitudinous laughter the old feud is forgotten. The death-weary myself. Now there danceth a God in me.-- Roman world for a moment is transformed, lighted by a new joy in life. His followers in an ecstasy of laughter throw themselves upon the 'There is no death'; instead the glad, free, acceptance of life, for swords of the legionaries sent to quell them. What is the hope of mere all is life, and death only the gateway to its universal flood of laughter. personal immortality to this ecstasy? 'Away with such cowardice of This is the meaning that Lazarus discovered during those three days. spirit [as to long for personal immortality]. We will to die! We will to And it brought joy to a man who before had been harassed by life. change! Laughing we lived with our gift, now with laughter give we 'There is no longer sorrow in his eyes. They must have forgotten back that gift to become again the Essence of the Giver! Dying we sorrow in the grave.' He forgot also age, for steadily as time passes he laugh with the Infinite! We are the Giver and the Gift! Laughing we grows younger. But his wife Miriam, who can't understand, grows give our lives for Life's sake. . . . O God, now I am laughing with you-- older, and as she passes he speaks these words of comfort, words that I am your laughter--and you are mine.' express the eternal paradox of those who cling to life and the things one loves: 'There is God's laughter on the hills of space, and the happiness Tiberius the old, and Caligula the young, both obsessed with of children, and the soft healing of innumerable dawns and evenings, fear of Death, and striving by lust and cruelty to poison fear, the and the blessing of Peace.' This is Wordsworth. dissolute Pompeia, searching for an anodyne to fear in the ecstasy of sense, all ask the same selfish question of life, all desire only hope of Hence in a season of calm weather, survival of the single self. To them comes the quick answer of Lazarus. Though inland far we be, 'What is--you? But there is hope for Man. Hope for you, Tiberius Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Caesar? Then dare to love Eternity without your fear desiring to Which brought us hither, possess(142) her . . . I know that age and time are but timidities of Can in a moment travel thither, thought.' And when finally Lazarus is thrown to the flames, as the last And see the children sport upon the shore, gesture of a doubting Emperor, Pompeia joins him in a frenzy, and the And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. (141) soldiers exclaim in easy allegory: 'We love men flaming toward the stars.' To them comes the last ringing shout of triumph from the martyr. But there is a word more. When Miriam dies, he exclaims to 'Life, Eternity, Stars and Dust, God's eternal laughter.' comfort himself: 'Man's loneliness is but his fear of life, lonely no more; millions of laughing stars that are around me: and laughing dust, The play is ecstatic; the of its laughter is pushed too born once of woman on this earth, now freed to dance! There is only far. The theme is by no means a contemporary one, but on the contrary God's eternal laughter! His laughter flows into the lonely heart.' This is as old as mysticism itself. But it is significant--is it not?--for a contemporary who speaks of ,the contemporary problem' to discover

63 for it an answer that is as old, almost, as human poetry, the ecstatic loss exterior he is a creative artist and passionate lover of life, whom his of personality in a sense of oneness with the All. It is the theme of other personality never quite permits full self- expression. And when Nietzsche Birth of Tragedy. But the leap into the infinite is the mystic's for a moment he lifts his mask, he is unrecognized except by the way of escape from the evils of the present. And there was one question woman of the street, Cybil, Mother Earth, who alone comes to know asked that the play in part at least left unanswered. The old and stricken and appreciate him. Tiberius asked wistfully--it was his last question--'Is there hope of love somewhere for men on earth?' Again it is a tragedy of frustration. There is no room today for Dionysus or perhaps for Saint Anthony. The Great God Brown has Is there hope of love? Here is a question again quite beyond the taken care of that. But both Dion and Anthony desire a god--the god of purlieus of science. And in his latest play O'Neill faces the question and this life and the sheer ecstasy of creative living, or the god of wrath and offers an answer, again not a new one but as old as human affection. ascetic denial. The Great God Brown on the contrary is only the idol of Immortality and love: the two most highly prized ideals of human the market place and the image to whom all the millions of William nature, in whose service human nature has achieved its highest Browns offer their sacrifice of material success. O'Neill is digging here humanity. His answer to the quest for immortality is given in Lazarus 'at the roots of the sickness of today' as he feels it. The old gods are Laughed; his answer to the quest for the power and significance of love dead and science and materialism have not been able to provide a is given in Days Without End; and the very title of the play suggests its spiritual substitute. meaning. As a study in character and as a theme, the play is powerfully O'Neill had tried nearly ten years before to tell the story of a moving; as a plot it is inconclusive. To the same problem and the dual personality, of a person torn between two quite contradictory experiment with masks O'Neill was to return(144)years later with a motives for life--the Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, if we will, that to more poignant situation and a possible solution. some extent are latent in all of us. It was the Great God Brown. As the author himself describes it, it is the story of the 'creative joy in life for Days Without End is the story of the two John Lovings, and life's sake(143)frustrated, rendered abortive, distorted by morality from both are the same man--the one figure masked and cynical, the other Pan into Satan, into a Mephistopheles masking himself to feel alive.' tragic, sensitive, and the apprehensive asker of the question, is there The very name of the chief character, Dion Anthony, suggests his state hope for love? Doubtless there is more than a hint of an autobiography of chronic civil war, Dion, Dionysus, the god of the free sensuous life in this play, with the plot of a novel and the moral of a Tolstoyan short and creative joy in living. Arrayed against him is the ascetic, self- story. When a boy John Loving had loved his parents with an affection martyred Saint Anthony, painfully crucifying temptation, that the pure bordering on religion. And then at a blow death had deprived him of in spirit may prevail. both parents and hope. Now no longer can he allow himself ever to become the victim of love, never permit the occasion to arise when he Who is, then, Dion Anthony? The figure who wears the could again be at the mercy of it and of life. So gradually there grows mocking mask, restless, adventurous, cynical? Or the sensitive, tortured the second John Loving, hard, cynical, and experimenting with all the spirit behind the mask, that is thwarted at every turn by friends and philosophies that might give him a mastery over life and an armored circumstance? It is the bold and cynical masked Mephistopheles that peace. He becomes the wayward ward of his uncle, Father Mathew wins the love of Margaret, and holds it in spite of all the disaster that Baird, and thus it is that he runs the gamut of the various contemporary follows in his naive and bewildering conduct. For behind the cynical

64 obsessions from atheism to Bolshevism and finally negative Buddhism. FatherBaird: Hear what, Jack? He is going to throttle life. John Loving: Life laughs with God's love again! Life laughs But again, and against the will of his cynical self, he discovers with love! love, Elsa. And with his marriage to her his problem becomes suddenly most acute. Must he kill this new love or 'again let love put him at the Is this also O'Neill's last word? mercy of life'? He is afraid of her and yet generously idealizes her, and has built a new superstructure of love about her. Swayed thus by There have been many in these later years that have returned to contradictory motives, suddenly for a moment the guard of the real the faith of our fathers, and its efficacy for giving motive and meaning John Loving is lowered. The masked Loving accepts a challenge from a to life. But is not O'Neill's return one with a difference? Is this return to Lucy Hillman, and the way now is clear to test his ability to free the altar of his boyhood only an emotional cleansing of the mind of its himself from the trap into which love had cast him. perilous stuff? Is it only a species of the well-known romantic conversion? Or is there behind it, as for many, the foundation of a How shall he test his wife? How discover whether her love for philosophy and an intellectual creed? It is too early yet for a final him is strong enough to stand the strain? So he writes an answer. For those like T. S. Eliot who have returned to the church, or autobiographical novel, the story of his conflict with life, and its crisis. like Thomas Mann who have returned to a personal faith in Deity, there Only Lucy, too, has had her need of(145)making , and has been the long preliminary discipline, the long sojourn in the valley without giving names has told her story to Elsa. Now when he reads of the Hollow Men(146)or on and the purgatory of aloud the corresponding chapter of the novel, the wife's eyes are Ash Wednesday, before there was the vision of acceptance and healing. opened. It is not fiction she is listening to but a confession. What shall There has been a deal of wandering in the desert for Eugene O'Neill; she do? Life, hope, love depend on her answer, as the two Lovings, one has he now suddenly, without the discipline of the crossing of the cool and cynically critical, the other passionately breaking under the Jordan, entered upon the richness of the Promised Land?(147) strain, watch her effort at suicide, its failure, and then her return to hope and forgiveness. Will this forgiveness and the peace of mind it brings (148) banish forever his masked and cynical antagonist? The penitent Loving pushes the cynical Loving aside and rushes, as a child with a child's faith, to the altar of a near-by chapel. For without an abounding faith in THE CONSCIENCE OF INDIA VIII divine mercy and love, there can be no unassailable faith in an abiding human forgiveness and love. The play closes and love has the last RABINDRANATH TAGORE word. 'Lead us from the unreal to the real.' FatherBaird: (stares at him gently) It's all right now, Jack, Elsa will live. SANYASI, OR THE ASCETIC

John Loving: (exaltedly) I know! Love lives forever! Death is 'Our life, like a river, strikes its banks not to find itself closed in by dead! Ssshh! Listen! Do you hear? them, but to realize anew every moment that it has its unending opening towards the sea. It is a poem that strikes its metre at every step

65 not to be silenced by its rigid regulations, but to give expression every moment to the inner freedom of its harmony. Fortunately India has no need for an abstract interpretation of SĀDHANĀ her philosophy. Consistently from the beginning she has striven to translate its ideas into practice in literature. She has a long tradition IT WAS not so many years ago, as years were once counted, when from the earliest days of the lyrics of the Vedas and epics to the writers Gandhi flashed upon the Western consciousness with his novel gospel of today, and these are not inconspicuous. It is fortunate that one of her of regeneration. Not that the West had not long known India. But it was most gifted writers has equal facility in his own vernacular and in only as a country of strange contradictions, grotesque faiths and English--and the fame of his poetry won him the for traditions, and an esoteric philosophy. It was a country for scholars, literature in 1913--Rabindranath Tagore. Not only as an interpreter of tourists, and missionaries, all more or less inspired by the complacent the spirit of a people that gave leadership to Gandhi, but as an author feeling that while the West had probably much to learn from the East, it that speaks in his own right, Tagore, in his poems, poetic and had far more to impart. India should be prepared for the blessings of allegorical dramas, and essays, is a source of illumination of the creed Western civilization. It was in those good old days--is it possible that of India. they were only a generation ago?--that Kipling sang the East is East and the West is West, and never the twain shall meet. How few then Maya, the doctrine that sees this world as illusion and the aim felt the real depths in that obvious refrain? of life an escape from its false allurements and the attainment of eternal peace; Nirvana, the doctrine old as Buddha, whose mission was to Yet suddenly with the coming of Gandhi the scene changed. teach us so to live that the claims of life might be allowed and yet India's imagination caught fire again as he breathed new life into the man's soul not mired in illusion on its eternal journey. Such was the old tradition of his people. How easily he seemed to live his dynamic central problem of(150)the Bhagavat-Gītā, the Lord's Song, that faith--a faith older in India than history. It was the theme of the sermon* in poetry before which all India bows. More than once in India Bhagavat-Gītā: a man should 'live a life in closest communion with and in the West this interesting poem has been set beside the Sermon God, while not(149)allowing his duties to the world to suffer any on the Mount, another sermon in poetry. There are striking similarities, abatement.' And what was this God and how serve him? To define God and as striking differences--the vast difference between the spirit of is perhaps beyond our powers, but Mr. Gandhi's answer to the second Christianity and the best in the spirit of Hinduism. The predicament of question was in the orthodox manner: selflessness and ahimsa, non- the hero of that song was not dissimilar to ours today, an unpleasant injury, and passive resistance to evil. As a result there followed the and hateful world, hateful the motives that one must meet, how then, redefining of the constitution of a World Empire. And now in this short of nihilism and an erasure of the problem, shall a man live and generation we are having the return invasion of occidental Europe and not be defiled? America by the ideas of India. The philosophy of Maya, illusion, separateness, and Nirvana, peace through renunciation and Yoga, have The scene in the epic, the Mahabharata, where the song occurs, become themes for radio programs and best sellers. And the doctrines is dramatic enough. The hero Arjuna is standing before his army drawn of India are pointed to as the only way out of our manifold evils.The up for battle. Beside him is his divine charioteer Krishna. Before him is philosophy of India is described in a chapter of The Golden Thread. the rival army of his cousins. His allies are strangers, his enemy his There the emphasis is on the relation of this philosophy to the classic kindred, how shall he give the sign of battle that shall unloose the literature from the days of the Vedas to the period of the great dramas.

66 hideous strife and bloodshed? How can he avoid sin? And in fear he Looking likewise on thine own Law, thou shouldst not be throws down his weapons and turns to the god. dismayed; for to a knight there is no thing more blest than a lawful strife. As I look, O Krishna, upon these kinsfolk meeting for battle, my limbs fail and my face withers. . . . But if thou wilt not wage this lawful battle, then wilt thou fail thine own Law and thine honour, and get sin. Trembling comes upon my body, and upstanding of the hair; Gāndīva falls from my hand, and my skin burns. I cannot stand No pacificism here; but a warning, and in it is the heart of in my place; my mind is as if awhirl. India's mystery. This action must proceed with no desire of personal gain or advantage. Duty, yes, but not a longing for the Contrary are the omens that I behold, O Long-Haired One. I see fruits of one's duty. no blessing from slaying of kinsfolk in strife; Holding in indifference alike pleasure and pain, gain and loss, I desire not victory, O Krishna, nor kingship, nor delights. What conquest and defeat, so make thyself ready for the fight; thus shall avail me kingship, O Lord of the Herds, or pleasures, or shalt thou get no sin. life? . . . Works defile Me not! in Me is no longing for fruit of The Gītā is the answer of the god to the bewildered hero. There Works. He who recognizes Me as such is not fettered by Works. are three lessons the true follower of peace must learn if he would attain the vision and live aright. The first, that death and life are not the . . . In Works be thine office; in their fruits must it never be. Be antithetical things that terrify only imperfect knowledge. The soul is not moved by the fruits of Works; but let not attachment to immortal and persists: worklessness dwell in thee.

As a man lays aside outworn garments and takes others that are Abiding under the Rule and casting off attachment, O Wealth- new, so the Body-Dweller puts away outworn bodies and goes Winner, so do thy Works, indifferent alike whether thou gain or to others that are new.(151) gain not. Indifference is called the Rule.

So this evil thing we call death is after all only the opening of a And here is the lesson of detachment, indifference, selflessness, new door, and pain, the necessary creaking of its hinges. The that must be the only motive in living. 'Indifference is called the Rule.' wise can ignore. Only through this can be attained that peace and harmony with the universe that is the expressed and unexpressed longing of every soul-- But further the prince is a knight, brought up in arms and in Nirvana. knightly deeds. His virtue, or dharma, is the enforcement of justice against the doer of evil. Now he is engaged in a war to restore justice to An austere doctrine, so it seems at first, as it is baldly an outraged generation. As a warrior it is his duty to fight that justice and(152)yet powerfully presented in the slokas of the Gītā. How can may prevail on earth. this severe disinterestedness, this loss of desire, self-annihilation it might seem, be reconciled with that joy in life and in nature and in

67 action that is also, like the desire for peace and harmony, innate in from ancient Greece and not greatly modified by the imperial tradition every human heart? Must the soldier be an iron man devoid of feeling of Rome. Even in the primitive village there were village elders, the as he goes into the war to establish justice? Is the river happy only at panchayat, and the elder in chief, the head-man. With all that the last when it has been lost in the sea, and the melody achieved only nineteenth and the twentieth centuries have brought of Europe to this when the last note is silent? Is our world of cabbages and kings, our alien soil, these old institutions and loyalties still have their hold of world to which the senses cling with agonized insistence, only the orthodoxy. The Indian prince, though he may imitate many of the world of Maya and to be denied, and the real to be found only in the practices of the West, still has his open days of durbar when he takes Absolute and hence supersensuous? Is the deepest poetry of life to be his seat on the royal gadhi, the throne, and dispenses a personal justice. found only in those transcendent moments, when all sense of human And in the villages the courts of arbitration held informally before the personality is lost in the annihilating ecstasy? elders have a binding force that even the love for litigation cannot quite overcome. Personal relationships and personal loyalties--again the ideal These are questions that have troubled Indian poetry for many of a human family. centuries. What has Tagore, speaking for the India of today, to offer in answer? Has he discovered the illumination that can make such a A rural people, even to its aristocracy, with an instinctive philosophy a motive, not only for the commander of armies, but also aversion to cultivating urban traditions, Indians more than Europeans, for the common soldier who bears the burden? except in these later generations, are taught to feel the influence of nature. The majesty of nature is celebrated by the nameless singers of It will be a simple answer, because life in India still preserves the prehistoric Rig Veda. The dramas and epics of the classical age are the simplicity of a civilization essentially rural and patriarchal--a long full of the power of nature. And everything is at hand in India to make tradition but a simple tradition. Cities were for courts and markets and a people nature conscious. The sacred Ganges and Jumna, nourishers of such cottage industry as the region desired; the vast majority of the life, as was the Nile to Egypt.The recurrent drama of the monsoons, the people dwelt, and still dwell, on the soil. The restlessness and givers of the harvest, and never failing.The vast forests with their discomfort of a population uprooted and hiring itself out to the more mystery and their teeming animal life.And towering to the north, the fortunate was and is yet largely unknown. Here, as in the earliest majesty of mountain, the symbol of power and eternity, silent and European tradition, the meaning of human brotherhood was a very real unapproachable. All these aspects of nature the earliest Sanscrit thing, and even today the greeting 'brother' to a stranger is expected and poets(154)felt from the remotest days, and in a manner different from understood. And the caste system, in spite of its obvious imperfections, urban Europe before Wordsworth. To the Indian poet nature was never and the blot of untouchability, extends the practical virtues of a foreign and hostile power, to be battled with and conquered, but part neighborliness to all of a caste, though they may live in different of a vast whole in which man also has a place. So the 'return to nature' provinces (153)and speak separate languages. So when Gandhi or to the devout Hindu means a mystical spiritual union very different Tagore speaks of the ideal of human brotherhood, and quotes the from any attitude Europe strove to cultivate--even Wordsworth. It is in parable of the good Samaritan, each has behind him the sanction of a this spirit that the ascetic follower of Yoga empties his mind of all long Indian tradition. thought of self and discovers peace when seated on the bank of some river or aloft on a mountain crest in rapt contemplation of nature's More, the social tradition of India is patriarchal. The kings, majesty. even as absolute sovereigns, were the fathers of their people. This in complete contradiction to the democratic tradition inherited by Europe

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One-ness with humanity, one-ness with nature, this is the gained the title in India, and startled the West. European civilization supreme wisdom that Indian philosophy has discovered, and in this had seen little to set beside him since the days of Saint Francis. perfect harmony man discovers peace, for this is also one-ness with God, the spirit of the All. So Tagore, quoting the Upanishads, that With this giving up of self comes the attainment also of true ancient textbook of philosophy that is recited in India's countless freedom. 'The bass and treble strings of our duty are only bonds as long homes, gives a description of the Rishi, the enlightened, to whom the as we cannot maintain them steadfastly attuned according to the law of right way has been made manifest. truth; and we cannot call by the name of freedom the loosening of them into the nothingness of inaction.' So Tagore describes it in his book of They were the rishis. What were the rishis? They who have essays, Sādhanā. The loss of self in the great world of nature, in the attained the supreme soul in knowledge were filled with wisdom, and fact of human brotherhood, and in the motive of disinterested love with having found him in union with the soul were in perfect harmony with which one undertakes every calling in life--all this is meant by union the inner self; they having realised him in the heart were free from all with God, and in this alone can be discovered the joy that is freedom selfish desires, and having experienced him in all the activities of the and peace. world, had attained calmness. The rishis were they who having reached the supreme God from all sides had found abiding peace, had become There is an exquisite little saying ascribed to the Lord Buddha united with all, had entered into the life of the Universe. that splendidly fills out this picture of blessedness: 'Faith is the seed, penance the rain, understanding my yoke and plough, modesty the pole It is in this poetic pantheism, this one-ness with God, that the of my plough, mind the tie, thoughtfulness my ploughshare and goad . . orthodox Indian imagination discovers peace and a joy. 'I bow to God . Exertion is my beast of burden carrying me without turning back to over and over again who is in fire and in water, and permeates the the place, where, having gone, one does not grieve . . . So this whole world, who is in the annual crops as well as in the perennial ploughing is ploughed; it bears the fruit of immortality.' (S. trees.' Here, in theory at least, and often in practice, the Indian poet Radhakrishnan in his Eastern Religions and Western Thought puts the found that selflessness, that disinterestedness that the Gītā celebrates as kernel of Indian philosophy in these words: 'To be inspired in the accomplishment of wisdom.(155) ourthoughts by divine knowledge, to be moved in our will by the divine purpose, to mould our emotions into harmony with divine bliss, to get As a lamp in a windless spot flickers not, such is the likeness at the great Self of truth, goodness, and beauty to which we give the that is told of the strict-minded Man of the Rule who labours name of God as a spiritual presence, to raise our whole being and life to upon the Rule of the Self. the divine status, is the ultimate purpose and meaning of human living.') (156) Is this a gospel only of quiescence? How about the active life? For answer the Hindu sage will say, the lamp is also active, is using and All of Tagore's poetry and drama is an allegory of man's search being used, spending itself for others; so disinterestedness, lack of for this peace--the search of a soul in exile. For a motto he might well desire for self, through the intensest of activity for others may attain have chosen a verse from the Upanishads: 'Rudra, O thou awful one, Nirvana. Or as Tagore himself has written, 'Our great Revealers are rend this dark cover in twain and let the saving beam of thy smile of they who make manifest the true meaning of the soul by giving up self grace strike through the night of gloom and waken my soul.' The place for the love of mankind.' These are the Mahatmas, the great of soul; of exile is Maya, illusion and its signs are the loss of one's true self and those who radiate blessings. It was in this manner that Gandhi through fault of will, or through desire for the imperfect and particular,

69 the forgetting of the universal source of man and nature and one who would find his way from the maze of error and illusion to the remembering only of the untrue self or of some single object of pathway of true living. Hence his dramas in particular are a sequence, affection. Such partial living is the night of gloom, which can be each an exquisite Pilgrim's Progress or a Paradise Regained, a moral pierced only by the supernal lightning of truth, Satyam, whose symbol fable, reminding us of the myths in Plato. He writes them, as did Plato, is Rudra, the God of fire. When this final truth is once discovered with that the boys in his school or readers the world over, whose its joy in activity, its motive of selfless love, and its perception of imaginations are yet plastic, may be touched into living awareness of eternal Beauty, of which every beautiful object is a symbol, then man their deeper meaning. They are rich with the imagery and poetic participates in the eternal activity of nature itself, as each note blends ornament of India, luxuriant perhaps at times for the Western into and gains its significance from the movement of the symphony, imagination trained in a more austere poetry. But luxuriance of and time and separateness cease: Nirvana. In the midst of such activity imagination is a long tradition in India, a heritage from the sixth- alone 'wilt thou desire to live a hundred years.' century dramatist Kalidasa, and before him from the earliest epics.

Tagore early dedicated himself to a life of poetry and art for In using again the old poetic material of ancient epic and drama India. He addresses the spirit of his country: Tagore does a thing not unlike the poetic dramatists of classical Greece. Many of his plots are incidents taken from the ancient Indian I will keep fresh the grassy paths where you walk in the mythology--a practice again that was current during the flourishing of morning, where your feet will be greeted with praise at every the ancient Sanscrit drama. He takes hints and incidents from the long step by the flowers eager for death. I will swing you in a swing epic of the Mahabharata or Ramayana, or inventions among the branches of the sapta parna, where the early evening patterned on an ancient model. Thus the stories are close to moon will struggle to kiss your skirt through the leaves. I will the(158)lives of all Indians, adult or children, and rich in romantic replenish with scented oil the lamp that burns by your bedside, interest and power. As we read Tagore we are a long way from the and decorate your footstool with sandal and saffron paste in realistic tradition of our West. wondrous design.(157) It is easy to illustrate his method. In his best-known plays the But Tagore is not a lonely singer, calling India the Queen back theme is the eternal human paradox: the world of truth and the false to the ancient beauty of her garden. There are many gardeners in this allurements of the world of illusion, and the instinctive call of the soul garden, for India is and has been of recent years experiencing a for its true home. And yet also the value of illusion and of transient renaissance of her traditional heritage of art and poetry. Only Tagore is beauty to beget the desire for truth. Such is the moral of the exquisite unique in that he is perfectly bilingual and his words, whether they are poetic drama, Chitra. The hero is Arjuna, the perplexed mortal of the uttered first in his native Bengali and translated by him into English, or Bhagavat-Gītā and hero of the epic Mahabharata. The heroine is first in English and then translated for his own people, carry always the Chitra, a princess, daughter of a king, but trained in arms and martial same convincingness. exercise, for the king has no son. She is the defender of her father's kingdom and a warrior without reproach, a fit rival even of Arjuna. But Always with him, as with the tradition of India, the plot of the now with the object of his military prowess accomplished and the drama, story, or poem is an allegory. As every beautiful object is a kingdom restored to his brothers and himself, Arjuna has retired to the symbol of a higher Truth and Beauty, so every incident in life or in the forest to discover peace, and there he is living in austere denial of all poet's imagination is an allegorical symbol, rich with significance to earthly joy. Chitra comes upon him while he is lying asleep in the

70 forest, instantly recognizes his greatness, and falls deeply in love. The Indian philosophy of life with its creed of Maya, that all Forgetting all maidenly reserve, she decks herself out in all her things as they appear in their separateness are illusory and of no value, feminine ornaments and pays him court. She is quickly repulsed. that desire for these things is evil, and that the state of peace can be attained only with the extinction of all desire, this nihilism of the In an agony of desire she turns to Madana, the god of love, and objective world and the search for that supersensible state of mind Vasanta, the god of immortal youth, to grant her immortal beauty for a when even the sense of individual existence is lost through austere single day, that with its allure she may win the ascetic prince. Her plea contemplation of the infinite, the state symbolized by the immobile is granted, and for a year. She has her wish, the hero becomes all hers. statue of a rapt Buddha, all this has had and still has its devotees. But But with her ecstasy there is the growing pain of deceit. It is not she, with its attainment the practical life comes to an end, and with life Chitra, the princess and woman with whom the knight has fallen in poetry. Tagore has written a drama(160)with an interesting comment love, but an illusion, a wraith, the fleeting creation of two complaisant on this ideal of absolute ascetic denial. Such attainment may be gods. Such love is not truth but also an illusion. So her joy brings no blessed, but there is a greater blessedness in mingling in the illusory eternal satisfaction, but only a greater thirst. The forest of their union dance of life, if it be done with full understanding and selfless love. and its flower-decked bower is only 'a slumbrous prison of green gloom,' 'a dense(159)cover of perfumed intoxication,' from which they It is the drama of Sanyasi, or the Ascetic. Sanyasi is the Hindi can only emerge by the hard pathway of truth. and Bengali word for the devotee who gives up life for the practice of religious austerities for the sake of freedom. The hero of this drama has He is a man and knight and must return from this intoxication of obtained deliverance, for him the world of time and sense has ceased to love to the stern realities of a knight's responsibilities. She must shed exist. 'The division of days and nights is not for me, nor that of months the borrowed beauty and return to the responsibilities of her palace and and years . . . I am free, I am the great solitary One . . . Now, when I am station. Will they be strong enough for the renunciation of illusion and free of fear and desires, when the mist has vanished, and my reason the acceptance of truth? But at the same time the borrowed illusion of shines pure and bright, let me go out into the kingdom of lies, and sit beauty had its place in the awakening of hero and heroine. Though it upon its heart, untouched and unmoved.' So like many a sanyasi of was an illusion it was the means for the revelation of something that today he seats himself by the highway of life to watch with profound neither hero nor heroine had guessed, the meaning of mutual and yet detachment its unmeaning panorama. selfless love. Though it was a false outward semblance, it was a guide to a large spiritual truth; and when its purpose was attained, it could be How small is this earth and confined, watched and followed by discarded. Even Maya can be a minister to truth. 'Mistress mine, do not the persistent horizons! The trees, houses, and crowd of things hope to pacify love with airy nothings. Give me something to clasp, are pressing upon my eyes. The light, like a cage, has shut out something that can last longer than pleasure, that can endure even the dark eternity; and the hours hop and cry within its barriers, through suffering.' (Nearly all romantic Indian literature, from the time like prisoned birds. But why are these noisy men rushing on, of the epics, has been concerned with the discipline of love to and for what purpose? They seem always afraid of missing selflessness. One is reminded of Plato definitions in The Symposium.) something,--something that never comes to their hands. 'Illusion is the first appearance of Truth . . . I grope for that bare simplicity of truth.' Can man endure it? In this drama both man and Life goes by, its endless procession, village elders and women, woman were content. students, flower girls, wayfarers, beggars, soldiers, each engaged upon his trifle, and all vanity. Then comes the little girl Vasanti, and with her

71 an emotion that has come from a sincere and suffering heart. For let it take me up again, let me join once more the pilgrims. Oh, Vasanti is an Untouchable, her father is dead, and nowhere can she find the fool, who wanted to seek safety in swimming alone, and kindness or protection. She clings to the saint for protection. He is gave up the light of the sun and stars, to pick his way with his unafraid of the pollution of untouchability, for he 'has washed away the glow- worm's lamp! world from his mind.' But also he will not allow himself to be entangled by her charm or softened by her pity.(161) 'The finite is the true infinite, and love knows its truth.' And he returns to the village to seek his lost world. She is dead, he learns. But Sanyasi. Don't you know this world is a bottomless chasm? The no, that cannot be true, for her death will be the death of all. 'She can swarm of creatures, coming out from the hole of nothingness, never be dead.' For she is the motive that eternally brings love and seeks for shelter, and enters into the gaping mouth of this beauty, and transforms the finite into the infinite.Renunciation of self, emptiness, and is lost. These are the ghosts of lies around you, for the sanyasiyasi, (162) yes, but the discovery in compensation of a who hold their market of illusions,--and the foods which they rich universe of responsive joy and beauty.(It is interesting to note that sell are shadows. They only deceive your hunger, but do not Tagore wrote this play, with an Untouchable bringing the true meaning satisfy. Come away from here, child, come away. of life to a holy devotee, just at the time when Gandhi began his attack against the curse of untouchability.) Vasanti. But, father, they seem so happy in this world. Can we not watch them from the roadside? It is significant that Tagore has in this drama found the motive for the discovery of love and beauty in the innocent forlornness of the Sanyasi. Alas, they do not understand. They cannot see that this daughter of an Untouchable. This is the station in life that all India world is death spread out to eternity.--It dies every moment, yet from the earliest days abhors. To be sure the Bhagavat-Gītā tells us that never comes to the end.--And we, the creatures of this world, 'the learned look with indifference alike upon a wise and courteous live by feeding upon death . . . Weep not, child, come to me. Brahman [the highest caste and object of universal reverence], a cow You seem to me like a cry of a lost world, like the song of a [the symbol of deity and sacred], an elephant [the symbol of wandering star. You bring to my mind something which is intelligence and benevolence], a dog, or an outcast man.' Yet these infinitely more than this Nature,--more than the sun and stars. It words have carried little merit in social practice. In this play, all of the is as great as the darkness. I understand it not. I have never villagers ignore or repulse her. But her very need for love creates it in known it, therefore I fear it. I must leave you.--Go back whence the arid heart of the sanyasi, who had reached the state of indifference you came,--the messenger of the unknown. praised by the Gītā. The parable here with its double edge deserves to be placed beside the parable of the 'neighbor' in the New Testament. But the little girl, though he has lost her by his devotion to truth, as he fancied it, has transformed the very pattern of his universe. No Perhaps the most significant of Tagore's plays, and the longest, longer is nature drab, its panorama of life meaningless. Love for nature is The King of the Dark Chamber--and also the one most rich in and love for his fellow man has blossomed in the heart that he once felt allegorical meaning. At the same time, as in the Sanyasi, there are the he had purged of human emotion. little realistic touches of Indian life-- villages, streets, palaces, with their native savor. Here the scene is chiefly royal, the court of a Let my vows of Sanyasi go. I break my staff and my alms-bowl. mysterious rajah, in some mysterious city blessed by his orderly rule. This stately ship, this world, which is crossing the sea of time,-- But none of his subjects, none of the court attendants, none of the

72 visitors that come to admire, not even his wife the queen, no one has The slander cannot touch the King. With a mere breath you can ever beheld him. And yet his state is kingly; his potency is felt by all. blow out the flame which a lamp inherits from the sun, but if all There is order and unquestioning obedience. Never was there such a the World blow upon the sun itself its effulgence remains city--straight streets and perfect civic life, and perfect justice. It is a undimmed and unimpaired as before. perfect contrast to an ordinary city and its king, as one is described by a pilgrim:(163) Then there are the many whose faith, or better whose practice, is sheer ignorance. They are the multitude in its blindness(164)that Our king does not believe in open thoroughfares; he thinks that obey any authority, unquestioning, and easily imposed upon and streets are just so many openings for his subjects to fly away misled. from his kingdom. It is quite the contrary here, nobody stands in your way, nobody objects to your going elsewhere if you like My faith is, to go on obeying the King--it does not matter to; and yet the people are far from deserting the kingdom. With whether he is a real one or a pretender. What do we know of such streets our country would certainly have been depopulated kings that we should judge them! It is like throwing stones in in no time. the dark--you are almost sure of missing your mark. I go on obeying and acknowledging--if it is a real king--well and good; Its inhabitants enjoy a freedom of action and of thought if not, what harm is there? quite different from the forced orthodoxy of other cities. And a band of visiting strangers on a pilgrimage to wonder and admire Of such is the kingdom of this life composed, where the unseen are filled with astonishment. King reigns.

After all, one cannot help wishing that the King had But the queen, who would know the King more intimately, who allowed himself to be seen at least this one day. What a great would be ever in his presence, and share his life, how will she bear the pity, to live in his Kingdom and yet not to have seen him for a invisible presence? She thus becomes the allegory of the searching soul single day! whose life would be a constant devotion, and who cannot be satisfied with only unquestioning faith. Only in the Dark Chamber of the heart Order, peace, intelligent freedom, and security. But who is their does the King visit her, but she longs for open possession. Her love author? Where does he sequester himself? Can he ever be seen? How must have something more substantial than the dark revelation. And may one discover the path to his audience? Some visitors are she is impatient at the incompleteness of a love of whose substance so incredulous, some only idly curious, some willing to deny. 'Where much is shrouded. would be the necessity of having a king if order and harmony exist already?' Is not the King here most appropriately the allegory of this No, no--I cannot live without light--I am restless in this stifling our universe with its attainment of order and its striving for security? dark . . . How can there be any union at all between us, in a Where order is attained, is there any necessity of its Maintainer? Is not place like this? No, no--it is impossible: there is a barrier the movement of the spheres automatic and axiomatic? Against these betwixt us two: not here, no, not in this place. I want to find you doubters is the innocent wisdom of the naive grandfather, old in years and see you where I see trees and animals, birds and stones and and joyous in faith. Though he has never beheld with his eyes, his faith the earth. never longs for the evidence of the senses.

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How can she wholeheartedly give herself to what after all may But this adequate joy is discovered in the annihilation of the be only an illusion? And then she is asked the question of questions, idea of separateness, for this is born of illusion, of Maya. It is the evil could she recognize him if she saw him? Could her love and devotion that prompted the queen's questioning. And for one in whom faith is be duped by an impostor? finally established there will be no Dark Chamber and its King a hidden mystery. Such is India's answer to the problem of evil in the world, in The impostor comes, the pseudo-king, a usurper, in appearance institutions, and in the heart of man. For centuries now India in its own right royal, and his progress through the city draws men's eyes and their manner has given a metaphysical and an ethical interpretation to the loyalty. All are imposed upon, even the queen. Now follows a scene words of the New Testament: 'Lay not up treasures where moth and showing the growing anarchy and confusion, until the little kingdom is rust doth corrupt.' Seek first(166)the kingdom of God, 'He that loseth overwhelmed and the queen in shame at her credulity takes refuge in himself shall find himself.' It is individual desire, desire that springs exile,(165)fleeing the burning palace and the clutches of four visitor from the idea of the unique significance of the individual, selfishness in kings that would plunder the kingdom, Greed, Ambition, Folly, Force. any of its aspects, even the motive of self-preservation, that is evil. For In shame and remorse and anger the queen makes her way to her old this makes for dualism, for a paradox, a contradiction between the All home, to begin again the quest of her King and husband. How can she and the Many. The many, be they never so clamorous, never so make herself worthy? For she finds her old home is no home and she is speciously alluring, in essence are of no more real consequence than a unwelcome. Will her bridegroom again come to her; or will she dream. They are Maya, the dream of the eternal World Spirit, and become the prey of the four ambitious vices? wisdom comes only when they are known to be of no more abiding substance. The rest of the play is the story of her restoration. Nightly she hears the music of an unseen lute at her window, conscience speaking But the tradition of Indian literature has never, as has Indian its music of promise. There is a great battle, the impieties are metaphysics, encouraged renunciation through the complete Yoga of overwhelmed, and in humility, with the grandfather, whose naive the ascetic. Such perfect attainment is only for the favored few, the wisdom was the best, for guide, she sets forth on her return. There must contemplative saints who can watch unmoved the irrelevant pattern of be adequate preparation for the meeting--the true Yoga. For the renewal the panorama of this dream. Such cold aloofness and perfect of the bond between the soul and its King is no exercise of austere insensibility may be attainable and even desirable, for it is the perfect mortification, instead it is a 'jolly pilgrimage,' and the signs of joy must escape from the evil. To such, as the sanyasi, there is no difference abound. between the highest and the lowest, for both are as nothing. Sub specie aeternitatis, where infinity engulfs all, all ranks and distances are equal When I shall find him, the first words that I shall tell him will and zero. But this is only to avoid the evil by denial and erasure. In be, 'I have not awaited your coming.' I shall say, 'For your sake such transcendental regions there can be no ethics, because all acts are have I trodden the hard and weary roads, and bitter and of equal value-- all are zero. And the meaning of the pattern of life, and ceaseless have been my weeping all the way.' I shall at least the passion of its acceptance and its manner, the very motive and have this pride in me when I meet him. substance of poetry and literature, like all other differences, become likewise zero. Poetry and literature can find no breath in this perfect Or to quote again from the Upanishads: 'From joy does spring vacuum. all this creation, by joy is it maintained, towards joy does it progress, and into joy does it enter.'

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So this answer, of all answers the perfect, to the problem of courage. Fearless affection restores the lunatic to sanity, transforms the conduct and evil, must be rejected, in part, and some compromise come hostile savage into a friend, tames the wild animal. The mental patterns to with the substance of Maya. The answer is in the last quest of the of love can be transferred from one mind to another and still retain its queen, the quest too of the sanyasi, for something beyond the self to virtue--. Evil is the accentuation of division; good, whatever makes for which one may devote one's whole endeavor in the service of active unity with other lives and other beings.' love. Metaphysically, love, like any other motive, may be of the essence of Maya;(167)but it is the motive in the Creator that prompted EYETLESS IN GAZA the act of the dream creation. The same motive animates, or should animate, all the actors in the dream; and then and then only will the FREEDOM, an aim in life that shall be all absorbing; an escape from dream have beauty. Here is a Nirvana, that while intellectually it knows the mechanics of science and economics, from machinery, from that all is an illusion, ethically it would make of the world a terrestrial uniformity and standardization, from comfort that is an anodyne for paradise of active peace and freedom. thought; the right to personality; all this that from the beginning has been the theme of the best in the essays and novels of Aldous Huxley is The emancipation of our physical nature is in attaining health, nothing new. It is his brave battle against the meaninglessness of of our social being in attaining goodness, of our self in attaining mechanically designed order that would make a Pullman car or a Ford love. tractor of life, that would substitute institutions for living, and thereby smother freedom. But it is not a new battle in a newly chosen field. It is Is this answer too naive, too simple, for the complex civilization new only in that he has called many of the forces at work today by new of today? In accepting it, is mankind also making the great and more descriptive names; and has thrown into the conflict a novel renunciation? Is it the answer only of the mystic few? Be the answers ardor. Above all his struggle deserves sympathy, for he perhaps is to these questions what they may, there are many in the West who are better qualified by temperament and inheritance to understand its full seeking for the vision.(168) significance. Nor should we be disappointed that his solution is not new. Too(169)much novelty in as old a thing as human nature is SIGHT TO THE BLIND IX always suspect. Nor need we accept his solution unqualifiedly, for one gains in understanding by a question well stated even when one rejects ALDOUS HUXLEY the answer. Yet it is not too much to say, even now before his work, we hope, is half completed, that Aldous Huxley is one of the most 'He ate civilization and it killed him . . . God manifests himself as an significant critics of contemporary life and ideas in Europe, and also absence, for he isn't compatible with Machinery.' one of the best qualified.

'I don't want comfort, I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I Eugene O'Neill, distressed by the emptiness of contemporary want freedom, I want sin.' life, once fled to the old safe arms of the church. Fled as instinctively as the child, frightened by its bold essay at the empty dark, to the arms of BRAVE NEW WORLD its mother. It is the old, inherited, unreasoning instinct to turn to a natural protector. Was there not much of the same biological instinct to 'And minds--minds also are unique, but unique above a substratum of survive in O'Neill's tears and his return to the church of his fathers? In mental identity. Identity and interchangeableness of love, trust, the same manner Faust, in despair at the emptiness of his life, was

75 rescued by the hymn of Easter and the voice of childish faith--rescued, triumphal progress in all of the sciences; is the vision that came to the but only for the passing moment. The emotional purge of the traditional old Goethe again possible? liturgies of a faith that the intellect has undermined may be potent, like a shot in the arm, but when its influence passes will not the patient Not long ago there was translated into English a novel by Karl require larger and more frequent ministrations? And always the act Capek, War with the Newts. It is the story of a new order of amphibians implies the denial of at least half of human nature, the approval of the discovered in some southern ocean, that because of their tractable reason. Huxley, the grandson of the scientist who as much as any other human intelligence and indefatigable industry, were transported to all won for the English-speaking world the battle for science in the nine- regions where cheap and uncomplaining industry was needed to teenth century, and the half-brother of one of the leading biologists supplement the human reluctance to do manual labor. As they were today, will not, like the apostle of old, deny his master. The solution, if taught, these half-water, half-earth creatures discovered more and more there is to be a solution, must satisfy both the claims of the reason and human characteristics, first of a kind that possessed the largest the heart. Neither of these primary human instruments can allow itself economic and biological survival value. They bred without romance, to be ignored. they worked unquestioningly, they acquired technical ingenuity and even technical inventiveness, but always such as was directed to the Science, the instrument of reason, has had and is having its main issue, survival. They were utterly without emotion--perfect exclusive day. We shall not put science in its place by turning our biological (171)machines, like the ants. In the end they grew to be so backs on it and indulging in an orgy of exalting the heart and its superior to man, with his aptitudes for art and leisure, that it became a emotions. It is only too easy to raise one's(170) hands in horror, like tragic question whether man, who is never perfectly efficient, who Rousseau, at the unhappiness that has been achieved in the name of never finds perfect happiness in co- operative work, who is always science--to raise one's hands in horror and flee to some sanctuary of the emotionally unstable and touched with the vertigo of an imagination--it soul. It is much more difficult--and again I would call in Goethe--to became a tragic question whether this inefficient humanity could reconstruct a life, after the tragedies of the heart, in the serene harmony survive the deluge of the newts. of heart and intellect. But science in its career of conquest has gone a long way, since its elementary prattle at the beginning of the nineteenth The satire in this novel is plain and perhaps overdrawn. But is century. The man who will understand its significance for life today, not technical and technological science tending in more places than one and its dangers, must know intimately things at which it was never to transform human nature into efficient and perfectly standardized and given Goethe even to guess. perfectly 'happy,' that is unquestioningly complacent, newts? If science is given perfect control, in the institutions of society and the state, and That science could never unlock the door of ultimate truth--this people can be psychologically and biologically conditioned for their was 'the rub' that caused Faust to reach for poison. sphere in life, cannot the perfect society be achieved and also the tragedy of human nature? There are more than a few qualified And here I stand, with all my lore, imaginations in Europe and America today who are not happy over the Poor fool, no wiser than before. triumph of science. One of the chiefest of these is the yet young Aldous Huxley. Science may be tragically emptying human life of the essence But science also could and did for Faust in Part II discover a that has been man's glory, uniqueness and freedom, and giving in their way of life that leads to salvation. It could build a new tradition and place identity and order. bring happiness to mankind. There have since then been ten decades of

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The science of biology itself gives the question an interesting interested in what he observes, as is the scientist, that he may and illuminating comment. In the long story of the extinction of some understand. 'My thinking is predominantly extraverted; but I have a species and the survival of others, it is always the species that are most great dislike of practical activity. I am interested in the outside world, splendidly specialized, the professionals as it were, that have been but only intellectually.' True, one can hardly fancy him in a band of exterminated when conditions to which they were perfectly adapted martyrs, but there is still a deal of deep feeling in his intellectual have suddenly changed. Such is the story of the sudden disappearance observation. Then he has the rare(173)gift of pointed satire, and satire of all the great and little saurians. They were magnificent triumphs in without the indignation to prompt it is less than a blank cartridge. 'Fecit their day of adaptation to their environment. But they were quite indignatio versus,' and indignation is a moral virtue. unfitted to any other, and when the environment for one reason or another changed, they could not follow. But the amateurs who never But above all he knows science and the aim of true scientists. allowed themselves the luxury of perfect adaptation, who were aways The grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, he belongs to a family famous partial misfits, (172)amateurishly and inefficiently playing the game of in its devotion to science. More than any other, he knows the difference life, with success and failure always uncertain, and with the sense of between the true scientist who is concerned only with pure and humble discomfort always giving scope to the imagination of an embryo poet-- intellectual understanding, and those who with inordinate pride would to these any change, sudden or gradual, in the environment was but one extend its boundaries. When in his Ends and Means he writes, 'We are more added to the already well-known obstacles in the uncertain game living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early of life. They played the game, and we their yet amateur descendants success of science, but in a rather grisly morning after, when it has study the rock fossils of the once successful professionals. Is become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to contemporary science, engaged successfully upon the ordering and improve the means for achieving unimportant or actually deteriorated perfecting of the practical business of life, liable so to standardize it ends,' he is thinking not of Newton or Einstein, but of the appliers of and fit it to the environment as to endanger man's amateur standing, scientific discovery to human comfort and leisure. He can afford to be and thus disqualify him ultimately in the game of life? It is an the critic of science when he understands that true scientists differ by a interesting question, whether or not science in its exceeding care to horizon from those, like the political scientists and economists, who try reduce human life, as it does with all nature, to a formula, has not to translate its findings into objects of comfort and into social and forgotten some essential aspects of life that are beyond and above any political systems. It is these blunderers who cause him again to write scope of science. bitterly: 'The scientific picture of the world is what it is because men of science combine this incompetence with certain special competence.' Aldous Huxley is well equipped to raise and perhaps to answer Blunderers and incompetent because they overlook the portion of this question. He has the sensitiveness and imagination of the artist human life that is the domain of art and ethics. whose domain is not the commonplace but the unique. For, as he himself once said in criticism of the proletarian literature, 'Life's so The essays and novels, which are Huxley's most significant ordinary that literature has to deal with the exceptional--Drama begins work, are a timely criticism of precisely this oversight of the where there's freedom of choice. Even proletarian books will deal with contemporary mind. He is a creative artist, but like Swift it is his exceptional proletarians.' There is more than a grain of truth in the critical insight into the sins of the age--sins against human nature--that generalization, hotly though some may debate it. He is a close observer prompts his art and gives it substance. He is thinker and observer first, of the life about him--this anyone can discover from even the most and his fiction a means of enforcing his moral. Perhaps of all cursory reading of his essays and novels. He is an intellectualist contemporary creative writers he most resembles the prophet of old

77 who to enforce his teaching turned to well-known parables and tales. In for vitality and spontaneous growth. But the aimlessness and emptiness this he(174)again resembles the honest, intrepid battler, his grandfather, of contemporary life is a theme that many have essayed and more have who in his day also was a prophet with a mission. Thomas Henry felt; (175)for with the advance in the comfort and luxuries of life has Huxley wrote and lectured, when he might have devoted himself to come a brilliance of color and a swiftness of movement and an research in biology, that he might set the world right about the nature abandonment to sensuous caprice that was impossible in the days and need of science. His mission was successful, and the domain of before science gave us comfortable houses and the means of rapid science was expanded until now it threatens to become absolute. The locomotion and the leisure for sensuous living. All this can easily be grandson, in his turn, neglecting pure art, turns to prophecy and satire mistaken for a richer living, as the colors of autumn might be read as a that again he may set the world right about science and rescue from its debauch of life instead of the omen of death. All this many novelists misuse the forgotten domain of human nature. and essayists have pointed out, until it takes no great imagination to repeat the foreboding. Brave New World on the contrary is a prophecy Nowhere has he done this more potently than in the satire Brave on a new, or at least a different theme: the seeds of death are already New World, which is the Gulliver's Travels of the twentieth planted for us in the triumphs of science. When science turns its eyes to century.Please, reader, do not get the impression from this that I am the conquest of the whole of the human world--and this conquest ascribing to Aldous Huxley a significance for all time equal to that of already is almost achieved--it will be a conquest which will mean also Lemuel Gulliver. There is a universality to the satire of Swift that the death of science. makes the story of the Lilliputians and the Brobdingnagians a service to every age. Lilliput is still in the here and now as it was in the days of Brave New World is a satire, again as Thomas More's Utopia is Queen Anne, a universal satire on human pigmies that fancy their a satire, in the form of a novel, a description of our lives as they will be world to be the pride of the cosmos. Huxley's satire is only of the here in the none too distant future, if the present obsessions persist for and now and the special incompetence of this age of Hitlers and other standardization according to the sciences--eugenics and psychology, as contrivers who see Paradise as the accomplishment of every scientific well as economics and mechanics. Thus, though it purports to be a look New Deal. into the future, it is much more an assessment of the present. For example, the little song in which the scientifically processed inhabitants To be sure it is exaggerated, so is Gulliver. To be sure it of the world find a substitute for the emotion of art: overlooks much, so does Gulliver, and above all it is cynical, at times bitterly brutal and offensive, and so also is Gulliver. There can be no Hug me till you drug me, honey; omelet without the breaking of eggs. But the breaking of painted eggs Kiss me till I'm in a coma: is the motive of satire. It is not meant to amuse or entertain, but to Hug me, honey, snugly bunny, shock. The Brave New World is shocking and is meant to be, as Love's as good as soma. Jeremiah was shocking when he described the finery and the emptiness of the daughters of Zion. Any night on the radio, or from the dance orchestra, drug like this is poured out by crooners. It is not a caricature of the theme song-- In his earliest novels, as in Chrome Yellow, he had visibly it is Hollywood. And people like it. portrayed the autumnal shade of contemporary life, life from which, as from autumn foliage, all vigor has departed, melancholy and It is the emotional substitute for art, as 'soma' in the Brave New World monotonous and ready for death. It has its false gaiety and its substitute is the artificial substitute for the exhilaration (176)of experience. Soma

78 is cheaper, for it comes in medicinal pellets, and it is safer, for it leaves This is a dawn that can be made to last forever. But no poet's no aftereffects of misadventure or danger. Again we think of substitutes imagination can ever give it hail or sing its praise, for there will be no that the safety of modern life offers for the thrill of real danger. Then, poets. that there be nothing lacking in the way of emotional outlet in this brave new world, with perfect safety for all, there are the 'Feelies.' The Yes, people are here conditioned for the role they are to play in movies today have one thing lacking, the response of the audience to life before they are born, no, before they are decanted, for they are their emotional thrill is not quite perfect. It requires some imaginative conceived in a test tube and decanted from a flask in which are all the labor to respond to the emotions of the hero and the heroine. So the ingredients, the hormones and fluids, that will make them what they are New World invented the 'Feelies' where the full play of all emotions is to be. Strict census is kept of all classes of society and babies are remotely distilled into the nerves of each member of the audience, planned ahead, like crops, to meet a foreseen shortage. There is the merely by his putting his arms on the chairs in the theatre. But is not 'alpha' class, the administrators-in-chief and the intellectuals, the 'betas' that day of the brave new world not much more than just around the below them, though yet a class of dignity. Below are the varied lower corner, if Hollywood and the technicians have their way? ranks, the 'gammas,' the 'deltas,' and last and lowest the 'epsilons.' Each class is exactly designed for its position and function; there are no 'Soma' and 'Feelies' compensate for the instinctive striving for errors or misfits. An 'epsilon' can no more dream of being an 'alpha' unique self-expression. They are spillways, safe and practicable, for the than a mosquito can compose elegies on the unhappy fate which kept personal dissatisfaction with his environment that each individual will him from being an elephant. So much virtue is there in science. some time feel, the craving for God, for danger, for excellence, even 'Abandon all hope ye that enter.' This motto with its ominous warning for sin when sin is unique and personal. But already with these might equally be inscribed above the arch of this scientific paradise. fortunate inhabitants of the brave new world, dissatisfaction and sin And it carries a more sinister warning than Dante's, for Dante's damned were impossible. This new deal began after a great world war that had had had at least one chance in life where hope might have been of for the last time made disorder prevail, and discomfort. So the director avail. In this paradise of the physiological-psychological-biologist, the of the new world, the super-dictator, declared things must be altered faculty of hope is not abandoned; it has been atrophied even before it is once and for all, and human nature changed. All the old incitements to decanted. extravagance and uniqueness and personal freedom were abolished by the psychologist, biologist, and efficiency engineer. The age of Ford Nor is this quite so fantastic a forecast of what may be as one was made to prevail. might imagine. The reign of the biologist-psychologist is already upon us, and none of even its more extravagant pictures is very far around You can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's the corner. Modern science has already available many of the stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never techniques, and the others are predictable. I recall an article in a well- want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; known magazine on the next century in science, by Julian Huxley, the they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old author's (178)half-brother. It is not a mere coincidence that what the age; they're plagued with no(177)mothers or fathers; they've got no biologist predicts the writer of fiction makes into the plot of his satirical wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so novel. For science can, if it is given the rule, reduce life to its greatest conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to comfort and maximum efficiency. If our two gods are to be the behave. efficiency engineer and the expert in eugenics and the ductless glands, here is a picture of the universe into which we can expect to be

79 translated. And reference is obvious to experiments in standardization moral. He is discovered for what he is, a mongrel in breeding, an that are being talked about and even made in various parts of the world, aristocrat in blood; and he is brought to the light, for his responses are and efforts to promote happiness through technology. unexpected and illuminating. He becomes the latest novelty. But in his native haunts he has discovered and learned to read Shakespeare--a Is the job worth the while? Is there something supremely highly objectionable and forbidden book. It is his reactions, unblessed precious that evaporates in the laboratory of the decanter and the shop and unconditioned, that are the theme of the novel. Poetry he has, rude of the mechanical contriver? Is this 'civilization wrapped in cellophane,' and untrained, and love of the unattainable. He supplies the gloss and and made safe for everyone's taking, worth the sacrifice? The answer to detailed commentary to the unexpressed dissatisfaction of the hero. He this question is the theme of the philosophical satire. What is lost when is the Nihilist, as great art and poetry is always the nihilist to comfort is valued above experience, stability above experiment, and complacency and comfort. happiness above art? When people are 'immune from life,' is life worth living? Is the expense of biological and psychological insurance against 'I don't want comfort, I want God, I want poetry. I want real failure too great for humanity to pay? Can humanity pay too much even danger, I want freedom, I want sin.' 'He ate civilization and it killed for perfect safety and cellophane? him.' Is modern civilization more and more becoming a poison to the best in human nature? In sensitive souls all over Europe, as in Huxley, Huxley answers these questions in the course of the novel in the there is the active fear that science can displace or destroy poetry. experiences of an unsuccessfully decanted hero, 'who had too much alcohol in his blood-surrogate,' and of a savage who had been Poetry is one way out of inescapable situations. These are the preserved in a reservation for the unblessed and who had never been causes of passion, passion that can express itself and find its discharge exposed to the regimen of science. Here are two interesting people. The in the laughter of comedy or tears of tragedy. But once bring perfect first is a young man who should be a perfect 'alpha,' qualified for the comfort, perfect standardization and stability--and this can be done conditioning of others, and whose life of work for which he is geared, through science--and the very source of passion is dried up, the fear of and the emotional outlets of sex, 'soma' and 'feelies,' should leave failure gives place(180)to the fatness of complacency, and life becomes nothing in life to be desired. But there is gnawing at his imagination a a mere routine as automatic as the composite life of the beehive or ant need for an unexpressed something, a dissatisfaction with perfection hill, where all individual initiative has been lost. The Brave New World and desire for desire. 'God manifests himself as an absence, for he isn't is not a fantastic Utopian jeu d'esprit. compatible with(179)machinery.' Nor is art. 'You're making flivvers out of the absolute minimum of steel--your works of art are practically Is there a way out? Can the moral hardening of the arteries of nothing but pure sensations.' It was this absence that troubled him, this today be arrested and the human health of the individual restored? Can something that could not be stilled by the tickle of sensation and safe we get rid of our obsession of the clinic, the laboratory, the machine, as sensuality. It was a world without Romance. the sole means of human welfare, and turn again, with a method not born in the laboratory, to the age-old problem of human regeneration? The savage was never more than a savage, but he had been born Here we have the Huxley of his latest utterances. And here also we of the illegitimate union of a stray 'beta' and an 'alpha' official. These have the burden of the prophecies of the prophets of old and the savages were people of the old regime, living not according to science mission of the saints and of those who had visions and dreams. We are but to nature, kept behind fences lest they contaminate the blessed, and in the region of the mystic. Mysticism and science--these two, since yet not exterminated because their blind state could serve as a perpetual Bacon defined the new science and its ideal of impersonal objectivity

80 and its method of mathematical measurement, have seemed to be at novel, as in the allegory, the Interpreter, the commenting author, in the hopeless odds. Will an answer to the question of human behavior, person of his chief character, in little moral essays and excursions into which is based upon a thing so intangible as a poet's dream, have any criticism, to give us the drift of the progress. standing in the world whose foundations seem so obstinately scientific? If not, then so much the worse for the world. So argue these new It goes without saying that it is a pilgrim's progress of utmost mystics. significance, for the author is the hero, as in Dante, of his own vision. Only his name is changed, and a trifle in his background. It is Huxley's Aldous Huxley made his answer in Eyeless in Gaza, an answer own effort to discover a motive for life that will save passion, art, that he expands in the essays in Ends and Means. It is interesting in internal initiative, in a word--freedom. And for this reason he selects as these our days to note how often the novel is used for the propagation his hero a person who like himself had to begin with an intellectualist of ideas. It has repeatedly been said by critics that literature, pure aversion for action--one to whom it was somewhat of a left-hand literature if there be such a thing, must not be propaganda. I am not so undertaking 'to become aware of one's interests as a human being, and sure when I think of Dante and Faust. It depends on the perfect to act on that awareness.' To convert such a person, to fuse all of his blending of the author's intellectual or moral purpose with his human faculties into one(182)organic unit, the biological, the imagination. Whether Huxley has achieved this magic quality of sheer intellectual, the aesthetic, and the social, and to inspire such a one with convincingness in his novel or not is a bit beside the purpose. I suspect, a motive for action, such is the plot of the story. To begin with, the hero as an aside, that he has not: the thought dominates the imagination, and is a scientist, a sociologist interested solely in the external facts and his characters and situations and above all the curious confusion of generalizations of his science, and busy on a treatise that will give time(181)that he permits suggest the virtuoso rather than the creator. complete intellectual satisfaction. He studies and associates with But the thought is compelling, and the more than average success of the human beings purely impersonally; he will not allow himself the book argues its timeliness. The essays are the gloss on the novel; and a disturbing luxury of passion, even his dealings with sex are as truly masterful novel--sayAnna Karenina--needs no gloss. dispassionate as the relief of yawning. As a critic he is superb, and his scalpel cuts deep and true: 'Once it was the Imitation of Christ, now of In its way Eyeless in Gaza is a morality story, like the old Hollywood'--Hollywood vs. Christ--the spurious in passion and the cry morality play, Everyman, or the classic allegory Pilgrim's Progress. It on the Cross. Excellent as criticism, but Anthony Beavis is to learn that is the story of a man who achieved salvation, but only after the process the critic is not the savior. The true prophet does not cynically chide. and the forces that lead to damnation have been abundantly revealed to His poetry comes from his depths of passion. This Anthony Beavis is to him, each in its own person and situation. We might almost call it an know, when once life in the raw has held him prisoner. So Anthony earthly comedy with the vision at the end of a world with a happy Beavis is Everyman. ending. But whether or not we accept the ending as the only possible one, if human nature is not to perish, the description of the process of The other characters are skilfully contrived personifications of disintegration and futility when life has lost its savor and its freedom is nearly all the varied forces and motives in contemporary society on the worthy of close attention. If in the Brave New World he uses the more comfortable levels. Thus the drama can pass in review almost all method of Utopia, here he turns again to realism and contemporary of the contemporary attitudes, criticizing, en passant, the comments on post-war life. The characters, in a word, may be of the morality play, modern life of many by our present-day novelists. Thus there are those, but they are also realistically and even naturalistically convincing. To like the never weary sensualist Mary Amberly, who follow life by the enforce the moral and comment on each kind of situation there is in the cultivation of the instinct, and above all the instinct of sex--Lawrence

81 and Gide. To these the élan vital, the urge of life, is never more than yourself in the presence of psychological atoms. A lot of these the instinct to sexual irresponsibility. There is again the attitude of pure atoms constitute normal experience and a selection from normal cynicism --people are only pigs masquerading. experience constitutes 'personality.' Each individual atom is unlike normal experience and still more unlike personality. The moment you give people the chance to be piggish, they take Conversely, each atom in one experience resembles the it--thankfully. That freedom you were talking about just now, the corresponding atom in another. Viewed microscopically a freedom at the top of the social ladder--it's just the licence to be a pig; woman's body is just like a washstand, and Napoleon's or alternately a prig, a self-satisfied pharisee like my father. Or else experience is just like Wellington's . . . both at once, like my precious brother. Pig and prig simultaneously. In Russia they haven't yet had the(183)chance to be pigs. Circumstances It was left to Blake to rationalize psychological atomism into a have forced them to be ascetics. But suppose their economic philosophical system. Man, according to Blake (and after him, experiment succeeds: suppose a time comes when they're all according to Proust, according to Lawrence), is simply a succession of prosperous--what's to prevent them turning into Babbitts? Millions and states. Good and evil can be predicted only of states, not of individuals, millions of soft, piggish Babbitts, ruled by a small minority of who in fact don't exist except as the places where(184) the states occur. ambitious Staitheses. It is the end of personality in the old sense of the word.

There is pathetic Bryan Foxe, Horseface--is his name also Or take this shot at the new idea of the totalitarian state-- the allegorical?--a hangover of Victorian ideas and ideals, a stammerer and modern Moloch to which old and young are now doing sacrifice. futile, as Victorian ideals have been stammering and futile to the new generation after the war. Against him is the equally futile and States and Nations don't exist as such. There are only people. physically incompetent young savant, whose love story with Helen Sets of people living in certain areas, having certain allegiances. Amberly is equally futile. All are almost as much an object of cynical Nations won't change their national policies unless and until people disapproval as Beppo, the frank sensualist, and Mark Staithes, the change their private policies. All governments, even Hitler's, even severe but futile critic. You can't get anywhere in a world where Stalin's, even Mussolini's are representative. Today's national behavior- motives are so unreal and passion only a thing of nerves and glands. -a large scale projection of today's individual behavior.

Huxley is equally critical of the ideas that are now in the How in all this confusion, unreality, futility, banality, cruelty, ascendancy. Here is his criticism of those who like Proust find the shall man find freedom? 'All modern history is a History of the Idea of secret of personality only in the reharvested past: Freedom from Institutions. It is also the History of the Fact of Slavery to the Institutions.' A curious, paradoxical, and yet deeply significant Matter, analyzed, consists of empty space and electric charges. sentence. Trying to save himself from slavery to old institutions, whose Take a woman and a washstand. Different in kind. But their discomfort has become galling, he invents an escape, a new institution, component electric charges are similar in kind. Odder still, each a new deal that will guarantee to him his liberty. They do talk even in of these component electric charges is different in kind from the Russia, Italy, and Germany, as well as in the United States, of whole woman or washstand. Changes in quantity, when institutions that can preserve freedom. Submit to a machine that you sufficiently great, produce changes in quality. Now human may be free, submit even at the price of persecution and bloodshed. We experience is analogous to matter. Analyze it--and you find shall force people to be free by confining them in concentration camps

82 or denying them equal opportunity. The epsilons in the Brave New Anthony Beavis saw the light after he met the wandering World were free and knew it, as the ant in the ant hill. doctor, anthropologist, lover of his fellow man, and devotee to the gospel of doing good, Dr. Miller. Opportunely, like a miracle, Dr. What is the way out? It must come with the recognition of Miller turns up at the exact moment, to save the life of Staithes, lost man's full nature, with a full knowledge of the whole truth. This is the and broken in the wilds of Central America, and the soul of Anthony, first preliminary to all action; and this is the theme of the larger half of broken and bewildered and a self-sentenced exile from the evil that is the essays in Ends and Means. There can be no turning of one's back on contemporary Europe. His first lesson is to become morally convinced the intellect and on science its product. Such a romantic escape would of the meaningfulness of life, as opposed to the current doctrine of be to deny half of the nature of man and one of his highest glories. But meaninglessness. To be sure, our contemporary science can find no after all science is not an end, nor are (185)the institutions and comforts meaning in life. Orthodox scientists never go(186)beyond the question that it can provide. The brave new world that it can create with its how to the old theological question why. And in all the formulas of leisure and safety is only a mistaking of the means for the end. And this science, from the constitution of the remotest galaxy in space to the life end is the cultivation of the full double nature of the individual, his story of man, his concern is only with the how. It is easy from this emotions and his intellect, his full personality with its instinctive love modesty of motive to draw the conclusion, and many there are who for freedom and initiative. draw it, that there is no why. Nature is as it is, and to question its purpose is to ask a question in a vacuum. Such is the cultivated Huxley is best as a critic of those who see only a segment of modesty of contemporary science, a sharp contrast to the old human nature. He is bitter in his denunciation of D. H. Lawrence, but confidence, that by its aid one could think the thoughts of God and read what he says applies equally to all, who, like Gide, look for happiness the design of the cosmic universe. We are a long way off, not only from in lending themselves to the sensuous urge of physical life. Dante who lived in the unscientific and dark days of the Middle Ages and the theologies of Saints Thomas and Augustine, but also from the But Lawrence had never looked through a microscope--those hopeful days of Goethe when science plucked its earliest ripened fruit depths beneath depths of namelessness, crawling irrepressibly-- they and tasting pronounced it of celestial flavor. Modern science is neither would have horrified him. He had insisted that the raw material should optimistic nor pessimistic. It is, and offers no opinion.But the life of be worked up--but worked only to a certain pitch and no further; that man is of different texture from the life of cosmic nature. How, when, the primal crawling energy should be used for the relatively higher why, we know not, but man has inherited, and cultivated his inheritance purpose of animal existence, but for no existence beyond the animal. of a moral nature, different quite, and with different values, from all Arbitrarily, illogically. life that science can investigate and measure. And this life, his moral nature, as his imagination assures him, is not meaningless. But it is man In like manner he turns on those to whom life is a purely alone that can give it meaning. This meaning can and must imply an intellectual process, who fear the sensuous and desiccate the tingling evolutionary process for man that is upward. Man, in spite of what look nerve and the throbbing artery. like tragic backslidings, is getting better, and human society more congenial. But this evolution is not by grace of a law of nature, but only Thought as an end, knowledge as an end. And now it had by man's own individual and composite effort. The motive for this become suddenly manifest that they were only means-as definitely raw effort is love; love intelligently directed toward intelligently designed material as life itself. ends. The law of love. 'Persistence, courage, endurance, all, fruits of love.'Empirical facts;

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One. We are all capable of love for other human beings. To cultivate the underlying impersonal consciousness, and thus Two. We impose limitations on that love. bring about awareness of others and transcend the limitations Three. We can transcend all these limitations--if we choose to.(187) (188)require improvements and developmental programs which it will be necessary for us to undertake. A reasonable degree of loan financing (It is a matter of observation that anyone who so desires can overcome will offer outlets to our savings and would, I think, fit our established personal dislike, class feeling, national hatred, colour prejudice. Not institutional arrangements better than the more drastic program of easy; but it can be done, if we have the will and know how to carry out financing the whole from taxation. There will be differences of opinion our good intentions.) as to how much should be financed from taxation and how much from borrowing . But, I repeat, it can all be tax finances if this policy is Four. Love expressing itself in good treatment breeds love. Hate deemed on balance the desirable one, despite the disadvantages referred expressing itself in bad treatment breeds hate. to above.

It is separateness, non-awareness, attachment to self, as the old orthodox philosophy of Buddhism calls it, that is the curse that has Adam Smith on Public Investment. afflicted human nature with its evil. Separateness that has led to private Adam Smith laid down the excellent principle that it is the duty of the greed and ambition; that has led to public greed and ambition, that has sovereign or commonwealth to erect and maintain "those public been dignified by the terms patriotism and national welfare and institutions and those public works, which, though they may be in the manifest destiny. These are the vices that undermine and destroy highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such a 'goodness and love.' Man must contemplate goodness and love until nature, that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual they exist and become motives for all conduct. 'God may or may not or small number of individuals, and which it therefore cannot be exist.' Perhaps it is immaterial; but man can create deity by making expected that any individual or small number of individuals should goodness and love, its attributes, prevail. Only then can peace prevail, erect or maintain" (Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chap. I, Part III). in the unity that combines individual differences and binds mankind into one coherent and organic whole. 'Unity beyond the turmoil of This principle as here stated is amply broad enough to include separations and divisions, goodness beyond the possibility of evil.' such projects as the TVA, urban redevelopment, slum clearance and public housing, educational and public health facilities, and the like. Is this a glimpse of the celestial vision? It is as near, perhaps, as the modern mind can grasp. 'From one argument to another, step by Three conditions are involved in this principle. Each explains step toward a consummation where there is no more discourse, only why certain projects can be undertaken only by the government. First, experience, only unmeditated knowledge, as of a color, a perfume, a some projects, whether by reason of magnitude or risk, cannot be musical sound.' At any rate it can banish the twin evils that to Huxley undertaken by private enterprise even though they might in he end are the devils that have corrupted human nature. It will therefore cure prove to be self-liquidating or even highly profitable. There is a the world of the prevailing obsessions with money and power. Remove prospect that the TVA and possibly the Columbia Valley projects will these evils and we shall be not far short of the paradise that the idealists fall into this category. Second, some projects in the nature of the case of the twentieth century dream of. Instead it will do and teach the cannot be expected to yield a return covering the direct cost, yet are things that make for peace. Such were the ideals of Karl Marx and nevertheless genuinely profitable in the sense that they enlarge total Lenin as well as Tagore and Gandhi. national income by an amount at least equal to their cost. Third, some

84 projects contribute very little to "Gross National Product," yet in terms never suitable for public investment. Nevertheless, the point does need of cultural and social values they are deemed to contribute to "well- stressing that typically truly self-liquidating projects ought in general to being" sufficiently to justify the "cost" in terms of productive resources be suitable for private enterprise. It is, however, especially projects that devoted to these activities. The former two are theoretically are not directly self-liquidating projects--projects which nonetheless capable(189)of statistical measurement though in practice accuracy or contribute to over-all Gross Product an amount(190)and gets only the precision is often difficult; the third represents a value judgment preliminaries. Or to change the figure, like the disciples of old, after the entered by the community as a whole through democratic processes. resurrection of Christ, were told to cleanse their minds and hearts, gather in an upper chamber, and await the Pentecost, Huxley urges the The first and last conditions are, I think, widely accepted and gathering of all men of good will to await the message. offer little difficulty. The second condition, however, has not been adequately recognized or appraised. Admittedly the principle involved How shall mind and heart be reconciled and the claims of both is a difficult one in practice. What is the over-all effect of a certain adequately answered? To answer 'by the universal acceptance of the governmental development project upon Gross National Product? This gospel of love' reminds us of the mission of Saint Francis or of one is often not easy to estimate. But we have no right to turn a project greater than the affectionate and gentle saint. Huxley is asking for the down until we have made the attempt. The comparative approach is moral of the New Testament divorced from its theology. His often useful. It will not be difficult in some cases to see that, with grandfather invented the word agnostic, and helped teach a view of respect to a certain project that brings no direct return to the Treasury nature pervaded by natural law; the grandson, lonely and aimless in this whatever, the over-all effect on the magnitude of the Gross National impersonal world, is turning again to the warmth and spiritual Product is far greater than that of another project involving the same companionship that has been associated with revealed religion. But the outlay, which cost, however, is directly reimbursable to the Treasury. flame of love is not kindled in a vacuum. The spectacle of a world The realizable direct return is i fact not of great importance for correct degenerating into an idolatry of Hollywood and Ford hardly calls its social accounting. In all cases, whatever the reimbursable returns may spark into being. The revelation of some great experience alone can be, the valid economic consideration should be: What is the over-all net inspire and maintain its sincere flow. Otherwise it is an exhibition of addition to Gross National Product from this project in relation to its literary dexterity like passing fireworks. In whose name is Aldous cost? If this fundamental principle were firmly grasped, we should have Huxley speaking? much less emphasis than is now placed upon "self- liquidating" projects. A good example is a free public road, which is clearly not Is mysticism to be the religion of the immediate future? There self-liquidating but nonetheless productive in a very real sense. are many who so believe. Is the East, in return for its economic and political conquest by the West, again invading the West, as it did first Indeed, if a project is clearly "self-liquidating" in character, in the days after Plato, bearing gifts of a new awareness and an rigorous adherents of private enterprise should oppose such a project intimately felt union of self with a power infinitely greater? The for public investment. If it is clearly self-liquidating (and of a size that pendulum is swinging, here where metaphysics has always been is manageable), it could and should be undertaken by private enterprise. uncongenial, from the objectivity and individualism of ancient Greece Self-liquidating projects of a magnitude so vast as to be unsuitable for to the mysticism of the later disciples of Plato. Christianity was one private enterprise, or involving the assumption of great risk in a single episode; are Hindu philosophy and the Bhagavat-Gītā and Buddha venture, are appropriate for public investment and can be undertaken going to be one more chapter of this long story? Many thinkers of only by government. Thus it is not true that self-liquidating projects are today are assured of the coming triumph of the vision of the Eastern

85 mystic. See S. Radhakrishnan, Eastern Religions and Western of good will the dismal spectacle today of a world that once more is Thought.(191) meeting force with force, and solving differences of opinion by the answer of armaments and exhaustion. And in this devastating effort the (192) other gifts of civilization that might be used for human regeneration are postponed or forgotten.(193)

GO TO THE ANT X The severest and most consistent critic of our contemporary civilization appeared a generation before its full implication became JULES ROMAINS apparent, and when the trumpets of science were sounding the near redemption of humanity. Tolstoi had the earnest conviction that broke 'I am not a dilettante of chaos.--The world, no doubt, at any given with science, and a jealous consistency that transformed him into an moment of its existence, is anything you want to call it. But it is out of affectionate but temperamental peasant. Like Saint Francis he chose the all this aimless dispersion, out of all these zigzagging efforts, out of all path of humility, and barefoot sought salvation. Like the poet Jeremiah this disorderly growth, that the ideal of an epoch ends by disentangling who saw his city bowed under the yoke of iniquity and would make of itself. Myriads of human activities are scattered in all directions by the himself a moving example, he too bent his neck to a yoke. It is hard to indifferent forces of self-interest, of passion, even of crime and fancy the immaculate Aldous Huxley in this role of the exemplary madness; and they proceed to destroy themselves in their clashes or prophet. Even Gandhi when occasion serves will ride in a Rolls-Royce lose themselves in the void--or so it seems. and allow himself the hospitality of princes. The way of the consistent reformer is beset today with manifold temptations and difficulties. 'But, out of all their number, some few of these activities are endowed with a little constancy by the pure in heart, for reasons which This is still the age of science, and to be quite convincing the certainly seem to respond to the most elementary designs of the Spirit. reformer must, either as Tolstoi, make the grand renunciation of science and all its ways, summon us back to the primitive simplicity of 'Then there occur epidemics, transmutations of objective, of the fancied age of gold--as does the poet Tagore--and call science a valuation, which are hard to explain. Everything comes to pass as false illusion born of intellectual pride; or, what is even more difficult, though the whole had chosen to make progress by means of a series of discover the way to the promised land through the discipline and richer clumsy jolts. In the confusion of wills, there must surely be some "of application of the gifts of science. And it is precisely this that is the goodwill."' largest contribution of Jules Romains to the imaginative thought of today. The gifted Frenchman is trying to do for the twentieth century Preface to MEN OF GOOD WILL what Goethe strove to do for the nineteenth, find a way of life for the individual, satisfying to the full the intellectual, physical, and moral PEACE and concord, the extinction of greed, selfish ambition, and nature of man; and at the same time gain for himself in its satisfaction war--beautiful ideals all, and since the dawn of history the burden of that serenity that made Goethe for all time an example of achieved prophets and poets. The healing of the disease, how obvious even to an culture. Jules Romains is striving to express, out of 'all the disorderly elementary thinker; and the history of human endeavor to crown the growth' and 'zigzagging effort' of the world today, 'the ideal of an angel and shackle the beast is the story of saints and martyrs from epoch'--an interesting effort and stupendous. Buddha to the latest martyr who chose a concentration camp in preference to regimentation. But there is against the effort of every man 86

Huxley approached the task by an exposure of some of(194)the trends created that does not think, feel, act in complete accord with the super- of science, the efforts of biologists, psychologists, and efficiency organism of which it is a part. How efficient, how eternal. engineers to standardize humanity. And he shakes his head at the melancholy spectacle of the neglect of the imaginative and spiritual Our ancient biological reformers started with the assumption side of human nature. Romains begins with a new study of what that a termite society could not be a success unless it was constructed science is revealing. To study and solve the problem raised by science on the plan of a super-organism, and that such a super- organism must we must know more of science and correct its errors by better necessarily conform to the fundamental laws of the individual knowledge. And of all the sciences Romains selects those that Huxley organism. [It is the king of the Termites speaking.] Rigid eugenics most feared, biology and psychology. These are the newest, offer most combined with rigid enforcement of the regulation requiring all anti- to the sensitive imagination, and may carry the largest promise for the social, diseased, and superannuated individuals promptly to join the future. choir invisible, at the same time solved the problem of ethics and hygiene, for we were thus enabled, so to speak, to ram virtue and health Many centuries ago a moralist praised the industry and wisdom back into the germ-plasm where they belong. And since we thus of the ant. 'Go to the ant . . . learn of her and be wise.' Since then there compelled not only our workers and soldiers, but even our kings and have been many philosophers and poets who have praised the wisdom queens to be born virtuous and to continue so throughout life, the of the ants and bees, and their contrivances for mutual security and co- midcretacious wowser [individualistic] caste, finding nothing to do, operative labor. But more recently with the interest in the psychology automatically disappeared. of crowds, there has been the effort to see in the perfection of the community life of these insects the emergence of a something more Professor Wheeler, in his Foibles of Insects and Men, is than the life of the single individual, a communal spirit, a super- doubtless indulging in a bit of quite appropriate humor. But here is also organism, as it were, that is even more real and compelling in power a scientific view of the biological source and value of social ethics and than the individual. It is invisible, but its potency is seen in the entire individual behavior. In these communities there is a god, a spirit, from submission to it of the single individual, whether queen, warrior, or whom all things flow, and all are conditioned to act in accord with his worker. It assigns functions, prescribes the manner of living, and the will. It is the thing once we called herd instinct, now we study it in man propagation of the species. It is the pan-insect, in whose life and in and call it crowd psychology. Why is it that cattle when they feed all whose life alone each member of the community has its being. It is their heads in the same direction; is it something akin to the god of the tribe. instinct that sets human beings to feeding in a common circle? Is it not possible that the spirit that governs, moves, and incites a crowd is more How efficient the tribe becomes in its adaptation to real and more potent than any individual in the crowd? Bergson tells circumstance when its will is thus singly made to prevail. Millennia and the story of a parish priest haranguing his congregation. The geological epochs before man and the vertebrates began their chaotic congregation was in tears, but one man in the audience sat unmoved. single-handed struggle against environment with their blind will to On being asked why he did not respond to(196)the priest's eloquence, survive, these creatures were even as they are now, triumphant against he replied: 'I do not belong to this parish.' Bergson draws from this a cataclysm, immune in their perfect organization against accident that conclusion to suit his theory of laughter; but cannot the conclusion destroyed(195)species and changed the face of the earth. Here is the more readily be drawn, that the man was not participating because he most carefully calculated division of labor, here the motto, one for all was not subject to the spirit of this particular group? He was an and all for one, is carried out to its simplest detail. Here no insect is outsider.

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Is it not possible, again, that in the careful study of the The nineteenth century, the age of democracy, encouraged the individual in which we have been engaged these many centuries, we ideal of individual excellence, self-respect, individual freedom, self- may have forgotten quite as important a factor in human life, the spirit reliance. The end of the century and the beginning of the twentieth see of the group? Certainly we can see on all sides today an effort to atone the gradual undermining of this ideal. The chaos of the social and for past delinquencies. A regiment of soldiers has a soul, and the international relations, pre-war and post-war, that have been the regiment does not die while there is one private left and its colors that favorite theme of contemporary literature, has again raised the serve as its secret symbol. Graduates and undergraduates are caught by question, is it not high time that thought be taken of man as a member the spell of their Alma Mater, the tradition, the spirit, the genius of their of a group? The old and orthodox notion that society exists for the school. And even in a devout theological argument Professor Edward welfare of the individual has slowly been replaced in many minds by a Scribner Ames reasons in a parallel manner to the existence of a god, new and revolutionary doctrine which sees no meaning or freedom in the genius of the community of his worshippers. Thus the group makes the isolated individual. He exists only that the welfare of the its deity, gives him substance in imagination, and in return from him community, that mystical super-organism, may be preserved. And this comes that sense of union, that subordination of the individual to the new doctrine with its scientific and metaphysical background, has its spirit of the super-organism. It was in precisely the same manner, influence, not only on the political and economic theories of Marxians unconsciously at first and then consciously, that the Roman conceived and Nazis, but also on the imaginations of artists who speak the of the perpetuity of the Eternal City, and made a god of its genius. And language neither of communism nor of the totalitarian state. It is a new is not the ancient mystical rite of initiation, caricatured perhaps today at faith, an active belief that a bond may be found, real and compelling, times, again not an assertion that over the community there broods an that shall bring order out of the present chaos. anxious and jealous spirit, which demands the complete and painful subjection of the new member? 'I am not a dilettante of chaos.' So writes Jules Romains as he begins in his novel the long excursion through contemporary The conscious urge that each member of the group at times (198)Europe that is perhaps to reveal at last who are the Men of Good feels in the welfare of its genius; how this breaks out in the barbaric, Will, who potentially or actually may make the community, the super- enthusiastic, and beautiful liturgies of the collegiate spectators in the organism, and with a fruitful ideal, conscious and unconscious, to guide grandstand at a football game; the massing of colors and of voices is its their actions, may hope to become the saviors of Europe. But many ritual, and the willingness of the contestant to spend and be spent to years before he planned this Odyssey of contemporary Europe he had the(197)utmost in its service, a manifestation of its reality. But its become a convert to the biological-psychological faith that the spirit potency may be and probably is the greater as it extends down into the that unites individuals can be more real than the individuals inherited memory and the subconscious. 'I could not love thee, dear, so themselves, that consciously or unconsciously communities are ever much, loved I not honor more' may today seem a fantastic conceit of forming and dissolving, and that the spirit that gives life to these unions the vanished age of a cavalier poet, but it was no conceit then. Honor is can be either beneficent or malevolent. He became a member of a small only in part a motive for individual excellence: much more is it in its literary group, fired by a common purpose, of whom Duhamel was depths a necessary homage the individual by unstained action pays to another, who gave to this spirit the name Unanimism. It became their the tradition of his class. Noblesse oblige. If the spirit of the group is so purpose to make a scientific study of this theme, for the cultivation of compelling in the motives and actions of the cultured aristocrat, what the right unanimisms may and should be a means 'to discover a must be its controlling power when the claims and responsibilities of spiritual meaning in the apparent meaninglessness of life.' And many in social life are more elemental?

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France, where they take literature seriously, took up with fervor the paths of uncounted feet. This is something that inspires the poetry also new doctrine. of Walt Whitman.

It is more than a doctrine, it is an experience, and not quite so . . . Thus, by blue Ontario's shore, While the winds fann'd me, novel as the new name for it would suggest--this going out, as it were, and the waves come trooping toward me, of one's own personality so as to embrace the wider horizon. Let me quote Romains's own telling of his experience of this communion with I thrill'd with the Power's pulsations-- something greater and more real than one's own self. 'I am in the rue d'Amsterdam as is a cell in the body of a man or in the leaf of a tree. Feeling that something was lacking in contemporary literature And I am at this moment the only one to possess consciousness. To me with its obsession with the individual, what Jules Romains calls a it is given to bring to the light of consciousness on the one side the 'turning with complacence towards a study of states of mind, fragile, throbs of its motors, on the other the movements and thoughts of each infinitely particular and perishable,' these young men founded a literary of its individual human beings.' Wordsworth was similarly uplifted into school, and in Romains discovered their standard bearer and leading a consciousness of oneness with nature. But he was a rural poet with a genius. It must be based, this school, upon a scrupulous study of the rural background. Romains is a child of the city. And what Wordsworth sciences, it must be endowed with the utmost of sensitivity to recognize felt in the presence of Nature, Romains feels in the throb of the life of the breath of the spirit it was theirs to(200)cultivate. The author of the the city. See the imaginative(199)picture that flows through the childish new age must be, 'un homme qui, appuyé sur une double formation experience of Bastide with his hoop. littéraire et scientifique, possède une sensibilité extrême aux états d'esprit et aux mouvements de la collectivité; et qui de plus a le don It was fine to have got as far away as this. The houses at the architectural.' side of the road looked at you with astonishment. They all looked at your face and said to themselves: 'How tired he must be!' But they were This is a new naturalism, a new study of the nature of man who wrong if they imagined that Louis had come there for their benefit. His arrives at completeness only in his collective state. If this be studied goal was far beyond, and he must get there before night, 'before night with the same intentness that, say, Proust has given to only a partial and overtook him,' as the books said. that an evanescent aspect of human nature, 'a vision centered only on the individual,' what new and rich laws, spiritual laws in the widest Such an intimate understanding can come only to one who, as sense, may not be laid bare.*Again the critic can interject that all this is Romains says of himself, 'has bathed himself in Paris, intoxicated by not quite as new as this young school fancied. Zola has it more than Paris for hours and days innumerable.' once in his descriptions of Paris, of mines, and of the soul of an army. Sociologists and anthropologists are scientifically at work, of course, In volume two--a scene too long to be quoted here--is the going on the same lines in their pedestrian way. And Rousseau once had a forth of Jerphanion's soul as from the roof of his college he looks over word or two to say of the volonté général, that sustaining general will the sleeping Paris below him. It is like the poetry of another, but of a community, on which he founded his theory of the state. unhappy, city dweller, Thomas Carlyle , in Sartor Resartus, as alone in the clouds of Princes Street the poet moves with the spirit of the The value and the novelty of this new school lay in the fact that darkened city. Unanimism, the spirit that controls a community and its it was an urban school. Modern civilization is urban, based on the physical background of streets and factories, of noisy traffic and the factory and the market, the wharf, the railway, and the street. Its rhythm

89 is not that of the winds and streams and rustle of leaves, of the slow sexual love, would offer no great promise of thinking on the scale of routine of rural towns and villages, as it was before modern industry contemporary civilization. Men of Good Will, so far as the work has transformed cities and transplanted populations. Now neighbors are not progressed, yet offers little definite clue of the author's final purpose. neighbors as the old world knew them, but the multitudes, all strangers, But of its present-day significance and the personal moral that it will the restless and resistless stream of unknown and unknowable that tread convey, of these--and these are chief--there can be no question. This in each other's footsteps in a city street. In this multitudinous and man has seen farther and questioned more closely than perhaps any apparently aimless contemporary life, can one possess that ubiquitous author today alive. We do not need to wait for his final answer. Perhaps sense that came once to the poet among the hills and villages of there will be nothing final, for we are yet in the process of Westmorland? How can the barriers that seem so obviously to separate transition.(202) these millions be broken down, and one feel the life of a city? Is there a life of the city? Can one sense the presence, physical and psychic, the Two things I think we can assert at once as the leading motives thought and the emotion, of this chaotic all? Not if it is a chaos. But is of his life's work. He has put them into the mouth of his younger it chaos(201)only for those who lack the right sensitiveness and have generation, growing up as he did in pre-war Paris. 'What must we have not the gift of discovering the range possible to consciousness? to keep us from fear?' Fear, that dread uncertainty of the future, that trembling of the nerves of the imagination before the unknown. The But its very complexity repels most, and they retire, as Proust, post-war years have lived with fear. The intellect must solve the riddle behind the barred and curtained windows of their homes, refusing to of the unknown and make it known, and then be it ever so dangerous it admit daylight and noise, which perplex and interfere with their minute need not inspire fear. And second, 'an indignation which he felt at sight study. Only at night when the monster is asleep do they venture abroad, of any example of intellectual chaos.' And in this past generation, and then only to the haunts of their kind. Yes, the city has a personality, heaven knows, these examples of intellectual chaos have been a a conscious life of its own, for him who can perceive. Its churches and plentiful plague. Add to these a moral distress at ugliness--the thing factories, its busses and railways, its stream of people, its skyline of that our industrial civilization has only too abundantly clothed itself in- buildings, its glitter of lights, all this is its external body. Within is the -and I think we have the motives that created Romains. For is it not true throb of the rhythmic pulse that is its life, and deeper, the thought and that physical ugliness is the outer sign of inner chaos? emotion that is its soul. The new poetry must penetrate to these depths to understand and create. The new ideas that will influence and mould Now smell that! Is it bad enough for you? None of your pity. conduct must arise in these depths or life is only a transient parasite. To Pity's a scent sachet that serves to stop your nose. Have a good smell at translate this dynamic life into poetry and prose, this became the the vileness of these men, these women, these children. Do you smell mission of Unanimism. it? Good. And now will you tell me if a Civilization isn't just a bad joke when it wonders by how much airplanes will soon shorten the journey Had he ceased his work with all that he published before the from Paris to Berlin, or whether it really ought to have gas or electric beginning of the Men of Good Will, we should have had no Jules lighting in the Champs- Elysées, while all the time that enormous Romains, only Farigoule, an interesting and exceedingly clever and multitude is squatting in its own excrement? graceful writer, with penetrating insight, but no great scope. Even his dramas, good as they are, give no great hint of the scope of this man's Obviously we have here something that is relatively new in preparation for his magnum opus. And the Psyche trilogy, after literature. The great tradition of European literature from the Greek on, showing how far an author can go in the portrayal of the mystery of with the possible exception of Rome, has been built upon the ideal of a

90 firm and self-sufficient individualism. Homer, Sophocles, Montaigne, The 'spirit' that creates the community, the unanimism, may be Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe--yes even Dante--have seen the individual trivial and transitory, it may be powerful and enduring: it may be in relation to himself and his conscience--his god, if you will. 'To thine malevolent and devastating, it may be beneficent(204) and creative. For own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not very early Jules Romains realized that all these creative powers that then be false to any man'; in these words Shakespeare may be inspire and give life to our actions and bring people into accord are not mimicking a contemporary fault(203)of overdoing trite maxims, but his of the same complexion and value. Above all they can be a means of satire would lose its point were the words not a common adage. Out of creating God--they can by the contrary be the means of evoking the this faith in the individual has come the ideal of self-reliant democracy Devil. Devil or God, each is the spirit that gives life and motion and and liberalism and the laissez-faire of the nineteenth-century ethical meaning to conduct. In this chapter I have purposely omitted reference code. Rousseau's doctrine of the original goodness of the unspoiled to his dramas. They are in effect short dramatic essays, clever and individual is only a congenial weed growing in this common garden. thoughtful, but to me not much more than preparations for his larger Whether the discipline come from without, or it be merely following works in fiction. Each discovers one of the monstrous delusions of the the natural, unspoiled instinct, it is the individual that counts in the long present day, the false gods, the false leaders, that are corrupting modern run. He exists for the glory of God, or for his own glory. It is for his society. He will do this better in his magnum opus, Men of Good Will. security and use that society was created, by some conscious or unconscious social contract; it is his creature with its constitution and It may be weak and transitory. See his picture in Volume I of by-laws alterable at will or even at caprice. Social institutions at best Men of Good Will, of the crowd before a shop window watching a sign are an implement, a useful compact, a social contract, alterable when painter at work within. The crowd stands, individuals come and pause, occasion arises, and only designed for the welfare of the supreme others, wearied, pass after gazing; but as long as the group is there a reality of the individual. They are the husk, he is the kernel. They are single curiosity holds them in momentary crystallization, a community clothes, he, the living body. with one dominating motive. They all hear the single voice and respond to the call--a brief, irrelevant, but yet obvious community--unanimism. Now that these later days, with more scientific insight into the Curious, too, how passengers on a liner on a voyage, each with a social needs of man, and the social unrest caused by war and new different personality and background, each there with a quite different disorder, and the apparent chaos and ugliness of efforts at new purpose, will for the space of the voyage forge a very real interest in adjustments, have made us a trifle suspicious of old ideals, it is not each other, vow eternal friendship. The spirit of the voyage has created unexpected, it is in fact a necessary phase of the contemporary a community--unanimism. The voyage over, the gangplank, and the revolution, to turn from the individual, who has proved himself so mystic union is broken, vows are forgotten. 'Who is that interesting inadequate, to the group; perhaps in it we can discover something that man I met last year on the way to Europe? I vowed I would never may 'keep us safe from fear.' It is quite to be expected that this new forget him. But--.' philosophy should accompany, and be a comment and criticism of, the efforts made in every country to find some substitute, whether in the The group may be of any size. In The Death of a Nobody [La ideal of the totalitarian state or the metaphysics of communism, for the Mort de quelqu'un], Romains does a little experiment whose results rusty and declaredly ineffective machinery of individualistic any and each of us can verify. It is an obscure tenement in an obscure democracy. region of Paris. The inmates in general come and go quite without raising the interest of each other. Among them is the Nobody. No one knows who he is, what he does; quite inconspicuous he is a Nobody

91 that even(205)the janitor fails to notice. Then suddenly this Nobody Le Dieu de corps the title that suggests Hollywood, The Body's dies. Instantly the tenement becomes a community united by a common Rapture, is to offend every idea that Romains had in composing the spirit, the inconspicuous Nobody is in everyone's imagination. People trilogy. The god of the flesh is Priapus, and it is he that the union first speak to each other who have never seen each other in their daily creates by its perfect communion of physical rapture. But as their union passing. They speak, they share a common emotion, bitten all of them is also spiritual there is Eros also, the god of the spirit of love; and by a common curiosity, they become neighbors, the tenement has for when they are separated it is an even greater god that keeps alert their the duration of the mutual interest become a community, and physical bond. proximity has become moral. Even more, the community of live interest has conferred something of immortality on the unknown dead. The story is as simple as that of any man and maid. Lucienne Unanimism and its transient power.Something mystical can be made of has left Paris to teach music in a provincial town. We have the perfect this, something reminiscent of the mysticism of early Christianity--'He study of her lonely bewildered efforts, of her entrance into a lives in us.' Somehow I do not like to press this point, though some conservative bourgeois family, of the two daughters so strangely critics of Romains have regarded it as central to his doctrine. unlike, of the father and mother of these girls, again so strangely unlike, and last of Pierre, a purser on a liner, visiting the family and But this, we may say, is only what every drill sergeant does designed as the suitor of one of the daughters. The very perplexity and with his company of recruits. True, but it can also be of supreme and crossed confusion, and diversity of wills and good-tempered lasting significance. And when it thus attains, as it were, super-human misunderstandings, are a perfect picture of a little world in chaos, a power, bending and moulding will and destiny, it may achieve dignity family in genial disaccord, and of two strangers, Lucienne and Pierre, and become a god--or a devil. It is the soul, the ultimate reality, of the who are drawn into the region of this benignant chaos. It is only fused community. To describe this and its effects our author wrote two spiritually uncomfortable, and that because there is in it no spirit of little treatises, the Manuel de Déification, 1910, and the Petit communion. Introduction ὰ l'Unanimisme, in 1925. But best of all he composed the Psyche trilogy. The title, the Greek term for soul, is significant and has This first volume might well be called Eros, for it is the story escaped most commentators. told by the girl of the awakening of a god, the god of spiritual love, for the call of the body is felt faintly and then only once. At first it is Of all recently published works this little series of three novels scarcely understood; but more and more insistently comes the call and has been most gratuitously misunderstood, and it easily lends itself to Pierre and Lucienne are drawn into a community of interest out of the misunderstanding. Lucienne, Le Dieu de corps and Quand le Navire. tangle and miscellany that is the family. The volume closes when once Translators, even, have thought of it as a psychological study of love the god is fully awake, and his power recognized in a mutual and its textbook, first of the girl, Lucienne and the awakening of love, acceptance by both. Now they have a world of order and space of their then of the man Pierre immediately after their marriage, then of both own, and a future. The second volume is the(207)story immediately when the ship has separated them. It can be all this, but something following their marriage. It is a modern cult of Priapus the god of uniquely more, a modern and scientific cult of the gods of love, Eros physical ecstasy, and his worship in the act of a perfect physical union. and Priapus, spirit and(206)flesh, that unite these two strangers and Offensive to some no doubt, for it lays bare with perfect frankness the make of them the perfect small community, the unit, husband and wife. domestic liturgy of marriage. But to Romains this is a religion as real in Here now we have something more than one and one making two, but the twentieth century as it was to the celebrants of the liturgy of the god one and one blending into one. For this reason to substitute for the title of fertility in the dark ages of paganism. And the evoe here is written

92 by one who knows all that modern biology and psychology has made in the longest bits of imaginative meandering. Men of Good Will is an naked of the mystery of sex. epic of a lost Europe, an Odyssey, where everyone is a Ulysses, and significance or its lack attaches to the adventures only as some seem The union of the two must now be tested by absence of one directed to a good end and others come to merited censure. As it started from the home, and their mystical union is the theme of the third and as it progresses one is driven more and more to the conclusion that volume, When the Ship. The mystical god who has now been created its only adequate conclusion can be either the perfect society that for this little family of two shows his potency by bringing them Huxley describes in his Brave New World, a society such as Karl Marx together, though three thousand miles intervene, through the power of conceived and Lenin tried to make prevail, or on the other hand the vision. It is a curious transference of vision that in the Middle Ages medieval Day of Judgment when the great gathering shall take place served saints in their moments of ecstasy, and enabled the spirit of man and the assessment of rewards and punishment. For the one the author to commune with the spirit of the universe. Here it serves a humble is not yet prepared, for he speaks none too enthusiastically of the purpose, but yet has the same power. Lucienne and Pierre commune, 'Marxist collectivism with all its barrack yard bureaucratic drabness'; with its aid, though between them lies the abyss of the Atlantic, so and the idea of a god sitting in judgment over the embers of a burnt-out strong and lasting is the god that their love has created. Here is a god of world is hardly in keeping with unanimistic theology. love whose attributes now transcend the pagan Eros and Priapus. Unanimism, but yet a unanimism of lesser scope, in that its power is Critics, while they admired the power of narration in the stream bounded by only two. The old naturalism with its obsession with of forthcoming volumes, still protested the evident lack of any center of science had treated love more and more as a necessary and unattractive interest; there is no coherent story. When will the plot of the men who biological episode. This new naturalism, based on a deeper knowledge have this desired good will emerge? The answer ought to be plain. No of science, is a protest, and restores love to its ancient and mystical rite, sooner than it does in contemporary Europe. It is our epic and we its a means of creating deity. A new paganism? characters, with our conflicts of ideas. There are many men of good will, and they work, even they, at cross purposes. It is(209)the epic of The old religions had their gods also for larger communities-- an idea. Which special brand of 'good will' the author will ultimately Jehovah the god of Israel and Palestine, the Genius of the city of Rome, choose as his own, that will have to wait until the chapters begin to the god of the state. So the later Romains also looks for a spirit that approach our own day. And the story of their emergence will mark the might unite larger and even larger communities, and be the means of conclusion of the novel--if ever it will have a conclusion. It is the epic exalting mankind,(208)by discovering in man hitherto unlooked for of an idea, and the idea, as it passes from shadowy anticipation into powers. This seems to be the theme for his larger and yet uncompleted more and more concrete realization, is the hero. work, Men of Good Will. In consequence people come and go in the novel with the same In one way it is hard to speak intelligently of this yet unrelated design as they do in real life on the streets of any large city-- uncompleted novel. For it is not a novel, as the term is applied to and Paris is the home of this novel. Here the crowd, foule, is more Thackeray Vanity Fair or Tolstoi's War and Peace, or even Rolland powerful than the individual and more real. People come and go, we Jean Christophe. For in spite of the subtitle, 'novel without a hero,' that see some once who may never reappear. Others have mysterious Thackeray gives to his story of English society, each of these novels errands and make a second call. But all, great and small, recognized or has central characters or groups of characters that serve as points of the unrecognized, are the city. It is so in the novel. New characters appear compass, and it is always easy for the reader to keep his bearings, even constantly, and characters who seemed designed for great ends are lost

93 forever. They form little cliques or groups, these, significant or Men of Good Will! A benediction from of old set out to insignificant, appear like eddies in a current; they may last for a volume winnow them from the crowd and claim their allegiance. May they or two, or finish their tale almost before it is started. It is a cinema of once more, one of these days, be reassembled by 'good tidings'! May our life from the days before the Great War to the events that are taking they find a sure means of recognizing one another, to the end that this shape today.In consequence the author for our convenience places at world, of which they are the merit and the salt, may not perish! the end of each volume an index of characters--a sort of Who's Who. And to aid us still more, lest we forget, a synopsis of the action at the Only this discovery can 'keep us safe from fear,' and guard us end of each volume. Both first aids deserve our gratitude. against chaos, the deadliest cause of fear. No wonder Romains finds it necessary to paint on a very large canvas. The small and the great are here, each on his own business of living. All ranks of society and people of every complexion. It is the All the gods or devils that Europe is setting up in perplexed marvel of modern story-tellers' art that he is able to keep them distinct search for freedom from fear; and the way that communities, little and and compelling. They are the good and the bad, the rich bourgeois, big, form and dissolve as the painful search goes on: Such is the 'money taking a rest,' and the laborers in factories, that new modern ambitious theme of the novel. To all this is joined a perfect use of all institution full of unrest for the future, politicians and statesmen-- many that the new science of psychology has offered in the study of behavior. recognizable under their fictitious names, some frankly identified-- For example, early in the series Quinette, a bewildered there are entrepreneurs and small boys getting their first jobs, there are bookbinder,(211)who wears a magnetic belt to restore his self- university professors and scientists,(210)there are authors popular and confidence, finds himself forming a bond with a murderer--a transitory unknown, the whole world passes unjudged in review, and will unanimism--that gives him now a sense of power. To carry on in this continue to pass, with ever new faces until the tale of volumes is new confidence, he murders his protégé and lays aside his 'Hercules' complete. belt. The inhibitions that had troubled him are now all laid, and he becomes a voluntary member of the police force on the watch for But what is of first importance is the idea that dominates each crime--a new bond. Quinette disappears early in the series, to appear of these forming and dissolving groups. This does not appear and many volumes later. He is a symbol of something restless and disappear. It may change its complexion, it may grow in power and be suppressed in contemporary life, and he had his 'fear.' Only his method transformed, but it is still the idea; and it is the complexity of the ideas, of conquering it is questionable. It will probably conquer him. personified now in this and now in that group, that sustains and is sustained by it, that is the plot of the novel. The various ideas that Or there is that most excellent volume, The Proud and the Europe has been living by in the past generation and is living by today, Meek, where we have the contrast between the rich bourgeoisie, with and their significance as they pass in review, and receive willy-nilly the its fears and its precautions and its futilities, and the insecure poor-- reader's praise or censure, this is the grand theme of this epic of what recent fiction has failed to exploit this now trite theme? Against contemporary Europe. These ideas are the contemporary deities, quite the great man of power and wealth is the exquisite Abbé Jeanne, the apart from any professed religion, and allow no partial worship. meek. Is the world the dichotomy the Abbé fancied? Is the final quarrel Contemporary Europe has many gods and many Mammons. Can men to be Nietzsche or Christ? Are these the two great antithetical of good will be discovered who will discover in turn a true God? unanimisms now being cultivated?

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He pondered the almost unbelievable pleasures of Charity, 'N. B.--Mustn't let above views interfere with experimental about which he had had his doubts that morning, that Charity which work.' was loving without taking. He thought of that miracle of the spirit by which, though the sufferings of others are bound upon our shoulders, But science is only an implement, not an end, and a scientist we feel a sense of comfort, deeper and more real than any given by alone in a society is as futile as a table of logarithms where there is no purely selfish pleasures. At such moments we understand that nothing one to use it. in the world is sweeter than the knowledge that we have been able to give one moment's happiness to another, nothing more precious than There are the repeated pictures of pre-war and war politics, and the sense that we have shared another's sorrow. Perfect compassion, above all the anxiety during the Agadir incident. All this centers about pity untouched by condescension, washed clean of pride, even of the the portrait of Gurau, an anxious liberal, while in the background is the pride of doing good. idealist Juares, with his socialism and the practical understanding, too, that if war comes all socialists will abandon theory and take up arms There is something futile in the literary world, as it is at present. with the rest of bewildered Europe. Against the idealism of socialists So on the one side Romains gives us the figure of Strigelius, the and liberals there is the more downright 'collective will' that modern symbol of the new literature of artful devices and its effort to discover industry is creating. Something quite new in the world, the proletarian some automatic and mathematical(212)clue to poetry. Against him is consciousness and conscience. All these apostles of the new, socialists the blatant Allory, with his popular following and his ambition to be and Marxists, are(213)being united by a mystic belief 'that the true entered into the Acad6mie Française. He fails to be elected, and there secret of social order lies ready to their hands, only awaiting discovery.' is madness and near-suicide. Against the futility of the literary world It is a new religion and has already its god. Are the men of good will, there is the rich imagination of the true scientist and its utterly practical the saviors of society to be found here? Romains thinks not. philosophy. Against these is the age-old church, the institution that has Competitive posts, academic honours, salaries, decorations, fought these many centuries to preserve its order and bring its mission marble busts set at the doors of great libraries . . . the sound of such to prevail. Will it, can it, be suited to modern conditions, and serve things is as the rustle of grass beneath the foot. The whole spirit of man again to redeem the world from darkness, and banish the new steps forth accoutred to do battle with serious issues. He snaps his paganisms? And we have the story of the Abbé Mionnet, a new fingers at Peter or Paul. In Peter or Paul he takes his temporary lodging churchman equipped to do battle for the church with the new artillery as an army bivouacs in barns upon its line of march. Peter or Paul will of a modernized church. There is no mysticism here like the Abbé be indemnified later --if there is time to think of such things. All that Jeanne's experience of God in the last chapter of Volume III: matters is that the army shall press forward. Similarly, although he regarded Christ as quite a close friend, (Ridiculously narrow view of education today, narrower than it barely hidden from his eyes; although he might sometimes go ever was. Almost entire abandonment of attempts to educate conscious so far as to dream that Christ existed only for him, he found no sensibility, emotions and passions, compared with what was done in contradiction in imagining that Christ existed also for classical times. Woman today. Romanticism, etc. . . .) everybody else, and from eternity; even for the whole creation of the stellar universe. 'Vast revolution possible.'

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Instead of this personal motive the new church accepts the humanity moves forward. . . . If, of course, we could organize in methods of science and business efficiency. It is a church of this world, Europe generally a group, of say, two or three thousand men, not more, and the Abbé is worldly minded and intelligently practical, and as 'wise who were intelligent and of absolute integrity, yet ready to take every as the serpent,' a worthy rival of the Marquis de Saint-Papoul, the risk and submit to every sacrifice, prepared to obey without question, industrialist, or Gurau, the politician. Can the world be saved from fear that would indeed be marvellous! . . . The introduction of such a factor by this new Christ? Again Romains is the critic of the recent revival of into the course of events would act like an explosive. The whole course Catholic intellectualism and efficient institutionalism. of history would be altered; it would become, literally, 'incalculable.'

'We are all of us in some sort looking for a "church." According For it is this theme of a possible 'community of existence' that runs like to our various tastes we are attracted by the socialists, the Sillon, the a scarlet thread through all the startings and stoppings of this unusual Action Française.' 'Surely what is tormenting us is just this feeling that book. In ancient times man had this community of existence in religion, we are wandering vaguely in a huge mass of humanity, that we are lost or in politics, perhaps even in art or adventure. But in the chaos of in it.' And there we have it. The search for the spirit that will make man contemporary life:(215) not a mob but a community. And so we study Masonry for what of strength there is in its secret bonds. And Laulerque, the(214)restless It seems to me that the prospect of the distant future consoles idealist who is looking for a church, gets in touch with some mystic, you rather too easily for the threat of immediate disasters . . . secret organization that hints its power to control national destinies and What I am looking for is the chance of joining forces with men bring peace. It, instead, perhaps was instrumental in bringing on the of fixed convictions, men of energy, men closely united in a war. And Jallez and Jerphanion, the two youths who leave the uiversity common purpose to work, by the most direct means possible to in these critical years just before the war, set out to find themselves and them, for the cure of certain evils and the prevention of certain a cause worthy of complete devotion. Is it any wonder, that in these dangers. By the word 'Church' I mean unity and enthusiasm even more critical years after the war, when Lenin or Mussolini or raised to a higher power than normal, and not the chatter of Hitler spoke in a loud voice and made their proclamation good with theologians. plentiful displays of force, idealistic youth became storm troopers, the camici neri, and even the secret police and bombers of the new spirit What of the portions of the book that have not yet appeared? that professed to bring peace and banish fear? But this will be the story We are now down only to the battle of Verdun.But Verdun--something of the last volumes. for itself should be said of this remarkable volume. It is an epic within an epic; or better, a drama, like the Aeschylian Greek, a tragedy, as Yet there is little idealism in the proclamation of the replete with impending destiny. Verdun is the hero, the idea, that gives organization to which Laulerque devoted his life. unity to the plot. At first all is chaos and divided counsels. Slowly the clouds gather, at first no bigger than a man's hand; there is the same We must have wisdom he says to realize that the greatest criss-cross of apprehension and apathy; and even when the catastrophe enterprises of history, the noblest undertakings, the schemes which in breaks, ironical refusal to accept its seriousness. Then the idea is born. the long run have most benefited the human race, have always shown, It is the story of the emergence of the unanimism that made possible at close range, just this unedifying mixture of meanness, selfishness, the great martyrdom and ultimate victory. and general hastiness. Pure idealism has, on the whole, counted for very little with the individuals concerned. Nevertheless that's how

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Is Jules Romains only a journalist and diagnostician who with 'The same boy who is nauseated by the drivel of an ideal pacifist is skilful hand and brain can record what his insight into men's lives ready to throw away his young life for the ideal of his nationality.' perceives; or is he a prophet also, who after he has made the record will find the men of good will who will have discovered the way? I am not MEIN KAMPF sure that it makes much difference in the long run whether he ever attains the mantle of the prophet, or remains, as he is now, only the 'Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people; and most excellently qualified diagnostician. We may dismiss also the fear walk ye in all the way that I have commanded you, that it may be well that the present catastrophe to France may not allow him to complete with you.' the novel; for in a way the novel is already complete, or better, can never be completed till man becomes finally 'fixed.' For it is the story JEREMIAH VI. 13 of the conflict of ideas that makes our world, and this is a conflict that will never, so long as humanity remains fluid, see an end. Always it A FEW days ago a friend commenting on the accumulation of horror in will be the story of communities dissolving into a mob and then the day's news exclaimed, 'I wish I could play God for two minutes.' reforming into new communities. We live so close to the special color Though a self-convinced unbeliever himself, he is a philosopher and I of the problem of our own age that often we fancy its pain and might gladly have allowed him the role, but only for two minutes. bewilderment to be unique. But there is(216)little new under the sun, There are only too many playing God. 'I am the greatest German who and there has been little since the wise old Hebrew composed the has ever lived. Mankind, led by the German race is now in a period of proverb. transition, just as it was when men first began to pass from the ape-like into the human stage. Now they are passing from the human into the But Jules Romains has given us a new name for an old recipe, super-human stage. I have preceded them. In so far as there is a God in Unanimism. And in giving it a new name he has also given a new the world, I am He' (Quoted by Wickham Steed, from an alleged fervor to the search for the spirit that binds and at the same time sets interview, in Out War Aims, Sicker and Warburg.) Megalomania? man free.(217) Psychology can explain it. But psychology alone is helpless to lay this restless spirit and ruthless. It has behind it today a nation in arms, (218) sacrificing(219)itself, and all who oppose, on the altar of the new Deity. No, there are too many mortals affecting to nod and shake the world. Even my philosopher friend might come to take himself THE IDOL OF THE TRIBE XI seriously.

MEIN KAMPF Playing God, or fancying oneself the mouthpiece of Deity, there is little to choose between them. And of those today who have been 'What we have to fight for is the security of the existence and the called to this role we are fortunate to have the confession of the one increase of our race and our people, the nourishment of its children and whose name to his followers is a greeting and a benediction, Hitler the preservation of the purity of the blood, the freedom and Mein Kampf. It is his confession and his dedication. But it is not the independence of the fatherland in order to enable our people to mature confession, like Saint Augustine's, of one bowed in humility before for the fulfillment of the mission which the Creator of the universe has God, drawn from the well of past offenses and asking for remission and allotted to them.' grace. Nor is it a dedication, like that of Isaiah, a man whose unclean

97 lips had been touched by a coal from the altar, standing forth from than a slight parallel between Hitler and the founder of Islam, and among a people of unclean lips: 'Here am I, send me.' It is to no power between Mein Kampf and the Koran. Both men come with the same without that this man owes obedience and before whom he bows the perfect assurance, and their books become motives for action. Both knee. The confession is addressed to his world that has gone whoring offer the same alternative to their contemporaries, Mein Kampf or the after false gods, and the only voice to which he hearkens is his own. sword. And both promise a heaven of bliss to the faithful. Hitler's progress since he took power has been no less dramatic and startling, The conviction that he was a man apart came early. and, whatever the final issue, the ideas that gave it motive are worth dispassionate study. But more than once I was tormented by the thought that, if Destiny had put me in the place of those incapable or criminal scamps Mein Kampf is a bible; it is more, it has been and still is a best or incompetents of our propaganda service, a different kind of battle seller. It is a textbook in all German schools, it is being read with would have been announced to Destiny. anxious curiosity by those who live in its shadow. It is a bible, for it contains maxims of conduct, lessons in art and literary criticism, and an In those months, for the first time, I felt fully the whims of appraisement of nearly all the issues of life today. This man who in fortune which kept me at the front in a place where any lucky move on forced retirement--he wrote in prison sequestered from his following-- the part of a Negro could shoot me down, while somewhere else I passed in review the panorama of his life and of contemporary would have been able to render a different service to my country. Germany, pronounced judgment, and delivered his program. It was again like the story of Mohammed, sequestered in Medina during the His life from that moment has been dedicated to his own altar. Hegira from Mecca, composing there the more militant Suras of the Koran. He writes to uplift the hearts of the faithful, a discipline that His is a new faith for an old people who had known the will make(221)them in the fullness of time masters of the earth. It is all aftermath of disaster and disillusionment and divided counsels. One there, a book of the law of life. thinks of Joan of Arc, but Saint Joan was an instrument and not the agent. One thinks of Mohammed, but the(220)founder of Islam was The ideas are not new. On the contrary it is because they are as only the last and chief of the prophets. But the fervor of Hitler's faith old as humanity and as elemental in their simplicity that they are so and its spectacular success recall some of the most dramatic crises and eagerly embraced. They are a call back to the old tribal loyalties and enthusiasms of history. He is only repeating some of the most unquestioning faith in a tribal god and creed. 'And I will take you to me interesting and instructive chapters of history-interesting and for a people, and I will be to you a god.' Loyalty to the leader, who instructive only in a long and dispassionate perspective. justifies this loyalty by deeds of self-sacrifice, and as unquestioning faith in the excellence of the tribe, elect and consecrated of old for They are stories of militant enthusiasms, and blazing with leadership and a blessing to all people. Hitler gave these ideas, that fanatical intolerance. The results often seem miraculous. The story of were not new, to a Germany in the aftermath of the Great War. They the spread of Mohammedism comes to mind. The utterly inconspicuous are the primitive antithesis of all the ideas of the dignity of man, and region of Mecca and Medina, surrounded by inhospitable desert, the individual self-responsibility, and liberal democracy, that the jarring feuds of sparsely scattered tribes whose names had never been eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries had cultivated. The days of written in history; and then Mohammed, and the Koran, and the mind Germany's and Europe's depression, while Hitler was completing his and face of three continents were altered for all time. There is more Lehrjahre in Vienna and Munich, had shaken the people's faith in the

98 liberal tradition; when Hitler found his voice the masses were ready. He ideas of a man to the rest of the world is the most ideal and the most was not interested in the intellectuals. natural one.

It is a return to the primitive, and an extension only of the tribal Gradually it extends the circle of its influence and gains new constitution of the old Germany. The demand for Lebensraum, that adherents. Now it must, as with all religion, have its sacred places and restless desire for expansion at the expense of neighbors, reminds us of its shrine. the expedition of Ariovistus, whom Caesar snubbed in his first year in Gaul. Or perhaps better of the Germanic tribes in the weakening days In connection with this, the geopolitical importance of a center of the Roman Empire that destroyed classical civilization. The divine of a movement cannot be overrated. Only the presence of such a center right of the leader to lead, and the divine obligation of the tribe to and of a place, bathed in the magic of a Mecca or a Rome, can at length follow his star. It is no wonder that the Nazi for his creed goes back in give a movement that force which is rooted in the inner unity and in the imagination to the days of the sagas of the Nibelungs. Their god is the recognition of a head that represents this unity. primitive god of battles, and their heroes the wasters of cities. Intellectual Europe for centuries has been trying to forget this creed. It Never before in the history of a cult or party has the inner story is no wonder that Hitler was not interested in the intellectuals. (222) of its rise to power been told with colder impassivity. It is as though a scientist were analyzing the steps of his experiment, or the astronomer The first article of this creed is the complete authority of the the approach of a new celestial body. The Leader of the new movement Leader, Der Führer. Mankind loves the strong man. Germany adores seems as inevitable(223)as a law of nature and as little to be him. questioned. With his appearance all 'waves of free thought' are frozen.

Like a woman, whose psychic feeling is influenced less by Therefore, out of the host of sometimes millions of people, who abstract reasoning than by an indefinable, sentimental longing for individually more or less clearly and distinctly guess this truth, partly complementary strength, who will submit to the strong man rather than perhaps understand it, one man must step forward in order to form, dominate the weakling, thus the masses love the ruler rather than the with apodictic force, out of the wavering world of imagination of the suppliant, and inwardly they are far more satisfied by a doctrine which great masses, granite principles, and to take up the fight for their sole tolerates no rival than by the grant of liberal freedom; they often feel at correctness, until out of the playing waves of a free world of thought a a loss what to do with it, and even easily feel themselves deserted. brazen rock of uniform combination of form and will arises.

Whether this idea comes from Nietzsche or from Carlyle makes The order he creates is 'anti-parliamentarian.' It rejects on little difference. Both Carlyle and Nietzsche would be horrified by the principle the decision of a majority by which the leader is degraded to romantic excess of its messianic ecstasy, and the cynical materialism of the position of the executive of the will and opinion of others. 'All this its program. It is messianic in its origin. is a sign of the decay of mankind.' When the Leader once appears he is supreme. And as the prophet of old ascended to Sinai, from whence An ingenious idea originates in the brain of a man who now were delivered the Law and the Commandments, so now this new feels himself called upon to transmit his knowledge to the rest of prophet has built himself a place apart from and above the daily routine mankind: he now preaches his views and gradually he gains a certain of lesser humanity, that from its eminence may be heard the new Law circle of followers. This state of the direct personal transmittal of the that will create a new people. Like the prophet he had a unique

99 responsibility that cannot be shared. 'He who wants to be the leader, The only difference is that to Kipling the thought brought with bears, with the highest, unrestricted authority, also the ultimate and the it a becoming humility. The Fuehrer so far has shown few traces of this most serious responsibility.' virtue.

'The general right for such an activity is based upon its Who are the elect? Hitler's idea of the pre-eminence of the necessity, the personal right on success.' And the Fuehrer has known Aryan is too much of a commonplace today to need notice. He is success. It is only in these last months that this success has been convinced of its leadership in history and culture and all the arts. The challenged. Is it already too late? Is he the man of destiny to teach the Aryans are the culture bearers and culture creators, and because of their world a new creed? success destined to rule. But all this is by way of a preface to the selection of the branch of this race that is called now to accept the Make a people believe that they are the people chosen by Covenant and by its discipline make itself ready for the high mission. destiny to re-create the world, and they will, under the leader, accept And here the orthodox Nazi creed sets itself squarely against all newly the mission. So did the Arab tribesmen in the seventh century when designed orders for world improvement. Thinkers(225)and planners, they burst out of the desert of Arabia upon an astonished world. So like Lenin, Karl Marx, or more modest but no less ardent advocates, seriously did they take to heart the magic of the Koran. In our own days dream of humanity as a whole, a world brotherhood or a world Jules Romains is(224)looking for 'the men of good will' who will bring federation. Nazism is founded upon the doctrine of one race, one a new day to distracted Europe. Who are the elect whom Mein Kampf is nation, and all who are without are dwellers in darkness and workers of summoning to make the supreme sacrifice that its new creed may evil. transform a nation and write a new design in history? The state is the race, the extended individual, one in blood, one 'The race question not only furnishes the key to world history, in creed, one in enthusiasm, one in self-sacrifice. He has adopted as his but also to human culture as a whole.' Such is Adolf Hitler's own a term used before, Volkische Staat, the folkish state. For the bond interpretation of the genesis and exodus of civilization. He learned it of unity must go deeper than economic and political and even social not in books or from the labors of philosophers. The insight came to interests, to the blood. It is again the extended family, the larger tribe, him--as it did to the solitary Mohammed--in his communion with the blood brotherhood where all for one and one for all is an instinctive himself, part of a reminiscence from the old poetry of the Teutonic motive for all action. In the old state 'temples of glory were only past, and part from the reminiscence from boyhood when the Old erected to merchants and state officials.' Here they will be erected only Testament and the Covenant between Jehovah and the chosen people to 'folkish' leaders. were read in the home and in the church. A belief in a peculiar heritage and in a people chosen of old for a great cosmic purpose needs no This is a little different from the idea of the totalitarian state that evidence beyond the poetry of an inner conviction. we see in Italy or Russia, for in both of these, though there is much enthusiasm, there is lacking the mystic doctrine of the sacrament of God of our fathers, known of old, blood union that makes for all other unions, and much of the mystic Lord of the far-flung battle line, devotion that makes sacrifice of self a joy. 'Democracy has no Beneath whose awful hand we hold convictions for which people could stake their lives.' Crude and Dominion over palm and pine. eccentric as Hitler's German is in most of Mein Kampf, when he comes to his definition of his state, he grows almost lyrical.

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The State is not an assembly of commercial parties in a certain The state, the leader who is the state personified, is the God. prescribed space for the fulfilment of economic tasks, but the organization of a community of physically and mentally equal human Race pride, state pride, these are synonymous. To achieve this beings for the better possibility of the furtherance of their species as again as in the tradition of the Koran, there must be no classes in the well as for the fulfilment of the goal of their existence assigned to them state, no unions of workers or of employers, no capitalists and no by Providence . . . The instinct of preserving the species is the first proletarians. The theory of 'human rights,' which threw a mantle of cause for the formation of human communities. But the State is a folk protection about the individual and gave him certain rights of life, organism and not an economic organism. liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are out of date. The individual has rights only in the rights of All, his liberty is that of co-operating to the Thus the most essential supposition for the formation and measure of his ability with the All, and his pursuit of happiness the preservation of a State is the presence of a certain feeling of quest for the welfare of the All. This is his religion-- is it any wonder homogeneity. . . . as well as the readiness to risk one's life for this with that in this new state, there can be only one(227)religion?--and all all means, something that will lead nations on their(226)own soil to the religious dogmas that look elsewhere than to the state for their creation of heroic virtues, but parasites to mendacious hypocrisy and inspiration are frowned upon and even actively persecuted. You cannot malicious cruelty . . . Then the best protection will not be represented in serve God and mammon. To whom is Nazi Germany now erecting an its arms, but in its citizens; not fortress walls will protect it, but the altar? living wall of men and women, filled with highest love for the country and with fanatical national enthusiasm. All who dwell in the state, as all who dwelt in the old state of Judea, are not citizens. Only the elect by race may hope for citizenship, 'Fanatical enthusiasm,' a single will, this in the place of divided others are 'strangers within thy gates,' who are to be treated as counsels, personal fears, and a sense of insecurity, and the inhibitions discretion dictates. The pure by blood, disciplined to self-sacrifice and of action that come with all ideas of personal futility in the present-day enthusiasm, are the citizens. Others who are less fortunate, though their chaos. The state authority is directed solely for the purpose of stay in the land may be one of generations, are subjects--such as the producing a higher personality, healthier, cleaner, and more cultured, conquered people, like Poles or Czechs. Still farther from the light are more alert, more ready for action. Is it any wonder that on the promise aliens, who are only allowed on tolerance, to be treated with hostility, of the new age all young Germany turned to the voice that promised or at best suspicion, for their language and dress betray them, and they hope and action; that it willingly underwent and undergoes the sternest may become agents of corruption. Never in European history has the discipline, hangs the picture of the Leader even in the more intimate doctrine of the nation received such a downright definition. For its regions of the household, and goes forth confidently to a war that will nearest parallel we must look to the constitution of Sparta. But Sparta bring it and him glory and justification? never dreamed of calling itself anything more than a city-state. The idea of a nation was yet centuries in the future. He who speaks of a mission of the German people on this earth must know that it can exist only in the formation of a State which sees It is a stern creed for a stern people, and the definition of a new its highest task in the preservation and the promotion of the most noble cult of freedom. 'I shall allow the gospel of the free man to be preached elements of our nationality which have remained, even of the entire to the man who is master of life and death, of human fear and man-kind, unharmed. superstition, who has learned to control his body and muscles and nerves, but remains at the same time impervious to the temptations of

101 the mind and of science presumably free.' What is being done in end of the war, Hitler has charged against this race. They are the chief Germany in the name of education is already well known. Education enemies of the Lord. Feeling so strangely, we can understand why he must be designed only for the 'folkish' mind. As for universal acts so ruthlessly. education: 'Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that Liberation has ever invented for its own Politically he [the Jew] denies to the State all means of self. destruction.'This and the preceding quotation are from Hermann preservation, he destroys the basis of any national self-dependence and Rauschning, Hitler Speaks. Though published by an enemy of the defense, he destroys the confidence in the leaders, he(229)derides regime, these ideas are perfectly consistent with the spirit of Mein history and the past, and he pulls down into the gutter every thing Kampf and Hitler's published speeches.(228) which is truly great. In the domain of culture he infects art, literature, the theater, smites natural feeling, overthrows all conceptions of beauty If the Aryans are the superior people, and of these the Germans and sublimity, of nobility and quality, and in turn he pulls the people the elect, who are the inferior?and why Hitler's peculiar and down into the confines of his own swinish nature. temperamental bitterness against the Jew? 'Therefore, I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator: by warding off There shall be no intercourse in the new state between these the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work.' When a conviction like this deadly parasites and the truly elect. Hence the horror of uncleanness in becomes so deep that it has all the inner convincingness of inspiration, any mixed marriage. His words of condemnation remind one of the there is little more to be said about it, unless it be to look with the judgment of the stern prophet Ezra: psychiatrist for its source. It is deeply felt. Hence it must be from a super-personal source. It is a religious mandate. When King Saul failed And Ezra the priest stood up, and said unto them. Ye have to carry out to the letter the command of Jehovah to exterminate the trespassed, and have married strange women, to increase the guilt of Amalekites, man, woman, child, and beast, the prophet Samuel Israel. Now therefore make confession unto the Lord, the God of your ruthlessly allowed him to experience the full enormity of his offense. fathers, and do his pleasure and separate yourselves from the people of Mein Kampf is as ruthless--here pity is dead, there can be no the land, and from strange women. compromise with the foes of the true religion. The blood-mixing, however, with the lowering of the racial For the Jew, by heredity and long environment, is the foe of the level caused by it, is the sole cause of the dying-off of old cultures; for 'folkish state.' Self-sacrifice for the good of the All can never become the people do not perish by lost wars, but by the loss of that force of an article in his creed. He is by nature now a seeker of individual power resistance which is contained only in the pure blood. through all the insidious agencies his cunning has devised. One by one he has gained control-- so the book alleges--of the agencies that sway It is an ironic jest of history that the same moral and spiritual public opinion, the press, the theatre, and even the machinery of indignation of the Old Testament Hebrew, the first Chosen Race, education. One by one he has climbed into the learned professions-- should now be turned against them by the newly Elect. It is the same law, medicine, scholarship--until he threatens the very existence of the horror of the unclean thing that the righteous cannot tolerate in their ideal of the state and patriotism. He cloaks this greed--so the argument midst, lest their eyes should be tempted and their devotion to their god runs--with the oily phrases of internationalism and mutual tolerance, suffer corruption and they be guilty of sin. only that he may devour the more secretly. All the evils of post-war Germany and the tragedy of the collapse of German civil morale at the

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And what one nation in the earth is like thy people, even like War and courage have done more great things than charity. Not Israel, whom God went to redeem unto himself for a people, your sympathy, but your bravery hath hitherto saved the and to make him a name, and to do great things for you, and victims. terrible things for thy land. Hitler and his legions do act like Nietzsche's mythical 'blond And what great nation is there, that hath statutes and judgments beast.' If war is the natural element for a people, how happy Germany so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day? should be today! 'The mild Goddess of Peace can march only side by Only take heed to thy self, and keep thy soul diligently, lest side with the God of War, and that every great deed of this peace needs thou forget the things which thine eyes saw.(230) the protection and help of force.' War must be ruthless, and enemies to be longed for. Thou shalt be blessed above all people. And thou shalt consume all the peoples which the Lord thy God shall deliver unto thee; In the ruthless attack upon an adversary the people sees at all thine eye shall not pity them: neither shalt thou serve their gods. times a proof of its own right, and it perceives the renunciation of his destruction as an uncertainty as regards its own right, if not as a sign of Every place whereon the sole of your foot shall tread shall be its own wrong . . . They must not shun the hatred of the enemies of our yours--there shall be no man able to stand before you. (2 nationality and our view of life and its expression, but they should long Samuel VII, Deuteronomy IV, VII, XI) for it.(231)

A faith so potent, a resolution so ruthless, can be kept alive only The cost of a war will be amply restored later by a higher by constant calls to action. His people are 'believers and fighters.' And culture that will come as its blessing. 'No sacrifice to ensure political here we are reminded of the apparent ruthlessness of Nietzsche's 'blond independence and freedom can be too great. Whatever is withdrawn beast.' 'The world was not meant for cowardly nations.' 'Mankind has from general cultural matters by a disproportionate requirement of grown strong in eternal struggle, and it will perish only through eternal armament, for the State is later restored in richest measure.' The past peace.' This does square beautifully with Nietzsche's address by twenty years have borne witness, and our children's children will yet be Zarathustra to the soldiers: paying the price. 'Their fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.' Never perhaps in all literature has the Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars--and the short cult of Force been so nakedly displayed, and so shamelessly peace more than the long. worshipped. Will cynicism have the last word?

You I advise not to work, but to fight. You I advise not to A cynical creed. Human nature is essentially base. The savagery peace, but to victory. Let your work be a fight, let your peace be of raw nature in the race for survival, after all these years of so-called a victory. civilization and enlightenment, is still unescapable. 'He who wants to live should fight, therefore, and he who does not want to battle in this Ye say it is a good cause which halloweth even war? I say unto world of eternal struggle does not deserve to be alive.' Such is the truth you: it is the good war which halloweth every cause. that this thinker has distilled from the story of history. There have been others who have shared this creed; but now he is making it the battle- cry of a people in arms. 'But if nations fight for their existence on this

103 planet--that is, if they are approached by the fateful question of "to be should be the target of any campaign by propaganda that dreams of or not to be"-- all reflections concerning humanity or aesthetics resolve success. Yet the prophet has his contempt for the masses; there is with themselves into nothing.' him none of the liberal ideology that dreams of the excellence of the nature of the submerged half of a population, none of the glorification Here we have it, the note that blends all the miscellaneous verbiage of of the proletarian that is an essential part of the equipment of the Mein Kampf into a book like the Koran or the Bible:the cynicism of a sentimental communist or reformer. Hitler is least of all a seer who gives us his measure of human nature; a gospel based on a sentimentalist, unless it is in his love of that abstraction 'the German cynical contempt for all independent human motive. I hope the reader people.' will remember with me that there is something in both the Hebrew Bible and in the Koran that contradicts this militant and exclusive All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual creed. There is the depth of a spiritual experience that Hitler and his level to the perception of the least intelligent of those toward whom it crew never dreamed of; and more a belief in the value of the individual intends to direct itself . . . The more modest, then, that its scientific soul, even the poorest, that Nazism can never attain to. ballast is, and the more it exclusively considers the feelings of the masses, the more striking will be its success . . . The great masses' Nowhere is this more apparent than in the methods he lays receptive ability is only very limited,(233)and their understanding is down for the education of the elect--propaganda for mass education. small, but their forgetfulness is great. As a consequence of these facts And with the efficiency (232) of the agencies for direct and constant all effective propaganda has to limit itself only to a very few points and mass education, the mouth of the leader is ever at the ear of the led. to use them like slogans until even the very last man is able to imagine what is intended by such a word. Hitler early guessed, or saw in a vision, the approach to the mass mind; he shows his genius in the manner in which he proposed to Propaganda must be effective, it need not be truthful. 'The task get a hearing and bend to his will the imaginations of millions. His of propaganda is, for instance, not to evaluate the various rights, but far ideas of the state may not be, are not, original. All his devices for the more to stress exclusively the one that is represented by it. It has not to policy of the Third Reich are accepted by him from varied sources. But search into truth as far as this is favorable to others, in order to present his is the living imagination which lent them a new persuasiveness, and it then to the masses with doctrinaire honesty, but it has rather to serve he it was who conveyed them to the imagination of the country, its own truth uninterruptedly.' It was with this early insight that he especially of the youth, and made them the message of a new gospel. began in the years immediately after the war to build his party. He has One can learn a great deal about propaganda, its use and abuse, from not needed to vary his technique. 'Influence on the great masses, Mein Kampf. concentration on a few points, continuous repetition of the latter, self- assured and confident wording of the texts in the form of apodictic It is to be addressed 'only to the masses.' 'It has to appeal assertion, greatest persistency in spreading, and patience in awaiting forever and only to the masses.' The intellectuals, who are in a hopeless the results.' Thus he proceeded, always keeping before him the analogy minority, must and should be ignored. Their sympathies may be of a military campaign. 'Concentrate on a single enemy.' Since he awakened; but because they have a stake in the old regime, have began in Vienna in the months immediately after the Great War, the something to lose by any revolution, they are hopelessly conservative. story of his victories is the story of his dramatic and ruthless use of Propaganda must aim not at enlightenment, but at action. Only the propaganda. masses who are restless, have nothing to lose, are eager for action,

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By its means, and the cult of action that is its end, Hitler hopes Liberalism as a tradition, from the days of Montaigne, the father to found--or he is founding?--a new state. A state of perfect obedience of liberal European thought, has placed its hope upon the disciplined and perfect order. A perfectly homogenous state where all the citizens and free individual. Hitler's contempt for human nature never grows will be of one race, one idea, one culture, one desire, and ever alert to more bitter than when he speaks of all liberal institutions. It is as exterminate the enemy within and hold in lawful subjection the enemy though, once a believer in them, he had found his faith shattered in the without. A state where the alarm bell is always ringing, and one never debris after the Great War, and in despair had turned to a new worship. goes forth ungirt of his sword. One thinks of the incident in the Old 'Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison Testament when the Prophet Nehemiah brought back the rejoicing that liberalism ever invented for its own destruction.' This has been captives to rebuild the sacred city of Jerusalem. Their first work was to quoted before, but it points to the first (235) institution that liberalism restore the walls of the sacred city that they might be a bulwark against holds sacred. 'We set ourselves the task of breeding types, not the enemy. And everyman at his labor went armed.(234) individualities.' So much for an institution that believes in the sacredness of the individual. He is even more disillusionedly bitter And it came to pass from that time forth, that half of my about parliament. 'Parliamentary bed-bugs,' 'parliamentary cattle servants wrought in the work, and half of them held the spears, the trading,' parliament, the 'greatest babbling institution of all time,' the shields, and the bows, and the coats of mail; and the rulers were behind 'gravedigger of the German nation and the German Reich.'So much for all the house of Judah. They that builded the wall and they that bare the second institution of liberal government. burdens laded themselves, every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other held his weapon; and the builders, every His argument goes even deeper. 'Liberalism is based upon one had his sword girded by his side, and so builded. utterly false assumptions. It rejects the aristocratic principle in nature; instead of the eternal privilege of force and strength, it uses the mass of But there have been those with minds that will not down, whose numbers and their dead weight.' Majority rule, the method of all words come not malapropos at such moments. Montaigne loved his city liberalism, 'sins against the aristocratic basis of nature.' 'A heroic of Paris. 'I love Paris so tenderly that even her spots, her blemishes, and decision is not likely to come from a hundred cowards.' There were her warts are dear to me.' But he could also write in a day when it was events in post-war Germany, as there have been many in all post-war quite as painful as today to preserve one's faith in human nature: 'I nations, to justify a sweeping inquiry. A diseased society can, if esteem all men as my countrymen; and as kindly embrace a Polonian as desperate, throw up a fanaticism like this. Only this fanatic is also a a Frenchman.' And of the virtue of perfect obedience he also has a genius, a genius with a gift of making himself heard, and he has no word in passing. 'The commonwealth requireth some to betray, some to scruples. 'I have no scruples, and I will use whatever weapons I please.' lie, some to massacre: leave we that commission to people more National Socialism is a challenge, perhaps to the death, of all that the obedient and pliable.' Finally of the civic virtue of perfect order: 'There tradition of liberalism has built in the past three centuries. It is a return is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by to the distant tribal past. Order, Method, and Discipline.' These were Montaigne's last words, written at a time when order was seemingly the one thing desired by More than once in Germany and in other parts of the world, the civil-war torn France. Here again, it may be, we have a good word for ideal of the National Socialist dictator has been compared with the war-torn Europe. One can pay too high a price for the blessing of teachings of Carlyle in Heroes and Hero Worship. Some professed uniformity. Carlyle admirers have been abashed at seeing the teaching of their master come to life. And Carlyle's attitude toward the war for liberation

105 of the slaves in America does not add to their comfort. Were Carlyle 'Do you hear music in your sleep? It is not a separate, slender melody, and then Nietzsche the spiritual ancestors of Hitler and of the but a mighty, growing, perfectly harmonized hymn. Who doesn't love intolerance that in its grasping for Lebensraum can admit no beauty? I love it in all, even its smaller manifestations . . . And won't compromise? The question is an interesting one, but it cannot be life be beautiful under socialism! No more war, no more poverty, or answered here. But behind the Carlyle of the Heroes and the Latterday oppression, or national barriers . . . Nothing! How human beings have Pamphlets is also the Carlyle of SartorResartus. (236)And even in the sullied, have poisoned the world!' Heroes and Hero Worship there is this sentence, in the chapter that brings the book to a conclusion. It is an imaginary address by AND QUIET FLOWS THE DON Cromwell to Parliament. 'You have had such an opportunity as no Parliament in Europe has ever had! Christ's Law, the Right and True, 'WE THE people,' to the framers of the constitution of the United States was to be in some measure made the Law of this land. In place of that, the phrase wore its meaning with a difference. Even the words of you have got into your idle pedantries, constitutionalities, bottomless President Lincoln, 'of the people, by the people, and for the people,' cavillings and questionings about written laws for my coming here;-- have a significance today that the audience at Gettysburg never and would send the whole matter in chaos again, because I have no dreamed of. For on that very day there was a young German Jew who Notary's parchment, but only God's voice from the battle-whirlwind, was thinking of a new bible, whose golden text was a summons to a for being President among you.' There is no need for farther comment; new revolution. The eighteenth century had pledged its faith to to Carlyle Cromwell was leading the English into the Promised Land. universal democracy, and mankind was the People. Marx in the To what destination is Hitler leading Germany? nineteenth century read the emancipation of man in a new gospel. The People are the producers, the workers--these are the beloved ones who But there are those, and in many places, who are silently or shall inherit the earth. All others, those who live off others' labor, the loudly proclaiming National Socialism as a world creed. The thought exploiters, the parasites, who toil not neither do they spin, and yet rival should give us pause. What would be the world's dilemma if every Solomon in all his glory--these must be excluded from the new nation should find a Hitler, and all proclaimed his doctrine of race Kingdom of the People. superiority and the right of the strong to survive? If each nation is a super-nation, and each race the elect, what will be the fate of The gospel according to Karl Marx, a philosophical treatise civilization? And one thing more--the paradox, do men gain freedom written in the manner of heavy German philosophy, remained for by sacrificing freedom? There was a day, not long ago, when such nearly half a century as obscure as his master Hegel's treatise on the questions would have been as fantastic as Gilbert and Sullivan. Today state. Pious initiates there were to be sure, and fanatical, but the People those who answer strike swiftly, armed with the new science and went on blithely unconscious until the war broke, and Lenin and mechanics. (237) Trotsky attempted (239) a state patterned on the heavenly model. And now the philosophies latent in Hegel and Marx are a byword. The (238) world has seen revolution on revolution. Communism and the totalitarian state, fascism, these are words to conjure with and raise angels and demons. Above all, the question, who are or what are, or THE MARXIAN FORMULA XII better, who is or what is, the People? Newspapers and politicians and soldiers are attempting the answer: ink, perspiration, international ill- MIKHAIL SHOLOKHOV feeling, rabid intolerance, and war are replacing the bland optimism of

106 the late Victorian democracy--that Fool's Paradise as our new prophets mark. Shelley did the same thing in his Prometheus Unbound, when he assure us. created the allegorical figures of Prometheus and Jupiter. It is interesting as a comment on how faiths and optimisms have a perennial Literature to be true must be revolutionary, so runs one habit of changing complexion, and the gods of yesterday are the devils argument, and the revolutionary writer has come into his own. Shelley of today. was a rebel more than a hundred years ago, but became an exile for his pains. Now it is fashionable to fancy oneself an exile, dream of a new These writers may not agree to what extent literature should be and purged Society of the People, be revolutionary in dress and style, used as a means toward the coming dictatorship of the proletariat; but and to urge unceasingly the need of a return of literature to actuality they are united on at least one common issue. To them writers for a and life. Literature, not the plaything of the idle and exploiting few, but hundred years or more have not known 'what to think about life,' and wet nurse of the new spirit that shall create a new world.Literature and that this confusion about life and reality has paralyzed above all that revolution.Literature and propaganda. These are the people who 'do not most supple and efficient form of literature, the novel.(In what follows need to be convinced of the decay of capitalism.' They form leagues, I am guided in some details by that interesting little volume by Ralph with officers and headquarters--an 'International Union of Fox, The Novel and the People. But books of this kind are teeming Revolutionary Writers.' The phrase they most quote is the vague from the presses today--all of them interesting and a few quite coinage of Joseph Stalin himself, Socialist Realism. Their purpose is to significant. See bibliography at the end).Life in the past hundred years make the world conscious of the present social unrest--who isn't?--to has been transformed by science until our mode of living today would promote the cause of the worker, and by every means possible to hasten be as foreign to a farmer and even a city-dweller of the eighteenth the day of the downfall of Capitalism.There is an active ' League of century as his age would be to a contemporary of Abraham. From a American Writers' affiliated with the International Union of people that were essentially rural we have suddenly become urban, and Revolutionary Writers--a union of writers, a curious reflection--as even for those who live on it the soil has come to acquire a new though writing is a trade or profession. It has become such for many. significance. The self-sufficient individual has disappeared with the This is devoted to the Marxist theory of Literature. When was there a self-contained community. So that not only do people live in masses theory of literature before? It has many most excellent writers enrolled, hitherto undreamed of, but their(241)mutual dependence has become as and has a vitality and vigor quite unmistakable. And it has done much inescapable as that of a colony of bees. Yet in the face of this, so these that is worthy of all praise. There are those in it, too, who do not new gospellers argue, poetry and the novel have gone on plowing the subscribe to the phrase, literature as propaganda.(240) long- exhausted fields of the past. It is to the problems of the present crisis that they must be recalled, the new relation of man to society, and It is interesting to reflect, in this day of the worship or damning to create a new society where again man may feel at home. of phrases, how these words Capitalism, Labor, are personified and made into living objects of veneration or execration. And how this For this, it is argued, the Marxian formula is quite specific and idea-worship is abetted by cartoons and concrete description. The must be accepted, the belief that the material mode of life determines Hindu who invents an elaborate mythology to perpetuate the lively the intellectual. So Marx explains the course of history. And a literature image of his god has no more fertile an imagination than these new that fails to make explicit man's relation to his material background will idolators who deify one economic system and diabolize another. The never reveal the whole man, will never know the nature of reality. frenzy with which the attack is made, or the defense, has not a little in 'Without Marxism, there is no approach to that essential truth which is common with an orgy of witch baitings. But all this is now beside the the chief concern of the writer.' Thus with one regal gesture the Marxist

107 sweeps away the airy cobwebs of the Hauptmanns, the Gides, the Jules Romains is trying to discover in Men of Good Will. They have Prousts, and the others whose concern is with the inner life of man. For been united by one common bond into a true community, that now acts these dreamers the world does not exist. The noise and stench of blast as one. The spirit that unites them is the spirit that breathes in and furnaces and sweat of reeking bodies, rather than the dreams of heretics animates each. It is all for one and one for all, not in the romantic sense of Soana and the probings into memories of a recovered past--the noisy of a perfect friendship, when these words were the motto of The Three present, the world of economics. These have come to be the theme of Musketeers and animated their exploits. For in spite of their perfect the new and emancipated. This and a passionate desire to change reality friendship the four perfect soldiers of Dumas's romance were romantics to a more human pattern. and aristocratic individuals. Personal friendship may or may not play its role, but there must be common consciousness of a common cause They must help change the pattern. 'Our world is torn by a and common effort for the attainment of the new order. And its symbol, historical struggle, and in that struggle Marxism, the outlook of the not romantic men of individual merit, but the hitherto undistinguished class called by history to build a new world on the ruins of the old, common man, the drab worker. plays the part that humanism played in the building of the world that replaced feudalism.' And of writers who have heard the call there have Such is the gospel of the new revolutionary writer, for he can been many in Europe and America, writers pledged to the faith and see no alternative. 'Faced with the ludicrous prospect of(243)a world in touched with pity and filled with new enthusiasm. They have their which, so to speak, several Roman Empires are trying to expand at each Marseillaise and their banner. They have the living example of Russia other's expense, there is still hope of a new civilization arising out of to make doubt impossible. There have been plays and novels almost the co-operation of man through communism. At one time, indeed, this without number. But the novel(242)is the more appropriate weapon was no more than a pious hope, a matter of faith. Now we know it is to because of its larger elasticity and canvas. And more, the novel by its be not only a practical possibility, but a historical necessity, unless the very nature grew out of man's consciousness of some social or physical human race is to relapse into barbarism' (From Philip Henderson, The discomfort, so they argue. For it is 'the epic of the struggle of the Novel Today. The new war gives these words a new meaning). And the individual against society, against nature, and it could only develop in a world today has had tragic examples of whole nations relapsing into society where the balance between man and society was lost, where barbarism. Is this optimistic faith the only hope for a world now on the man was at war with his fellows or with nature. Such a society is edge of the abyss? But Shelley a hundred years ago was as optimistic Capitalistic Society.' More and better novels, until, when the an individualist, and it is his faith that is now being rejected. millennium dawns, there will no longer be any need of them. A people's literature with a people's consciousness, with its The hero of the Marxist novel will not be any one person, nor conflicts with the adversary, that righteousness and the will of the will the villain; but the people and its adversary. And the disappearance people may prevail and the earth be glad. How different this from the of the hero of old romance and of the villain, the one the old literature where it was only the individual's consciousness, they personification of all the qualities that should endow the ideal argue, and the conflict of the single individual with an unfeeling gentleman, the other the perfect model of turpitude, is quite in keeping society. Such were the themes of even the very great, as Dostoevsky or with the new obsession of the age and with Marxist philosophy. The Tolstoi in Russia, filled with pity as they both were at the common villain now is not an individual, but a system, the old epoch of misery; or of Balzac or Thackeray, who found relief in a cultured capitalistic exploiter of the worker and his oppressor. The people are cynicism. 'Much modern literature is so unsatisfactory because it the hero and the heroine, for they are now that super- individual that proceeds from a spirit of petty rancor and bitterness in the author, who

108 can never forgive the world for having made him suffer. It is not from whom the freedom of liberal democracy had been no more than a the desire to be revenged upon the world that great literature proceeds. mirage, the poor underdog worker, must be freed, not as an individual, The revolutionary novel will only be an advance upon the but in his corporate mass, as the People. Free him from the tyranny that contemporary bourgeois novel, with all its shallow cynicism and subtle has oppressed him, give him in his corporate life the opportunity of metaphysical conflicts, in so far as it contributes to a greater mass direction, free this latent will and benevolence, and presto, the understanding of human relationships. It is, indeed, on the basis of a dream of poets and prophets will come true.(245)Then the human new humanism that writers will restore to the novel that richness and wastage, the crime, the bitterness and class hatreds, even international vigor and breadth of sympathy which characterize the finest hatreds, will be no more. Justice, social justice, and the will of the productions of the humanmind.'(Ibid.)(244) People will prevail.

And here we have it, the full triumph of communism as a The example of a Russia where the experiment of twenty years universal militant creed will restore to literature the glories of the has produced a literature worthy of note is pointed to with encouraging golden age. pride. In that country novelists and dramatists and poets, as artists of all kinds, are no accidental gift of a careless Providence, but fostered and I think the difference in points of view between the orthodox even petted, and grouped into unions by the benevolent state. The state nineteenth century with its creed of liberalism and the orthodox with paternal care looks after their nourishment and sees to it that no Marxian with its creed of communism needs to be stressed even at the obnoxious weeds shall grow on their Parnassus, which might poison cost of some repetition. Both seek the banishment of fear, and both the imagination. And there have been artists and poets, novelists and seek freedom. But they look for it in quite opposite directions. dramatists who have gathered appropriate fame not only in their own Whitman, perhaps the most vociferous if not the sweetest of land, but whose works have been best sellers or near best in many liberalizing poets, with a cosmic gesture 'henceforth ordains himself countries of contemporary Europe. One such, and to me the most free of all limits and imaginary lines.' A revolutionist to the core in his significant, is the yet young novelist Sholokhov. youth, he stands convinced of the eternal worth and self-sufficiency of the individual and his needs and aspirations. So also Emerson writes his With Sholokhov we have the thing vaguely adumbrated by that magnificent eulogy on Self-Reliance. Each individual is a continent or a phrase 'Socialist Realism.' But it is interesting to comment that as his star and the glory of the creator is reflected in his cosmic dance of pure work matures there is in it less and less of the obvious propaganda for freedom--man freed from fear by the strengthening of his faith in the worker and the Soviet State than there was in his earlier efforts, and himself. above all in the work of his lesser contemporaries. And Quiet Flows the Don and even Seeds of Tomorrow (or, as it is better translated and But this freedom, to the Marxian, as well as to the advocate of better known in England, Broken Earth), though written obviously by a any totalitarianism, leads to individual excesses on the part of the member of the Soviet party, are never crude in the effort to inculcate unscrupulous and more cunning, and we have the evils of capitalism. Soviet doctrine. They never caricature its opponents, but on the For, again to the Marxian, the economic motive is the dominant one in contrary are severely sympathetic to adversaries even when the cause the interpretation of history. And we have the spectacle of Europe at of the revolution is at stake. So far they are not militantly 'socialist.' the beginning of the twentieth century and the Great War. So the And as for 'realism,' one can judge by the sequel. release from one fear led, for some, to a far greater, and the devil cast out by liberal democracy returned with seven others. Now those to

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All this is as it should be. For art can never be directed to mere her she slashed her throat with its point. She fell as though struck down propaganda. For propaganda is a machine-made thing, excellent or before the burning, savage pain, and feeling, mournfully realising that sinister, has the conscious purpose of an imposed creed, and can so she had not completely carried out her intention, she struggled on to easily be imposed from without even upon(246)a reluctant mind. The all-fours, then on to her(247)knees. Hurriedly (she was terrified by the very essence of art is complete freedom of the imagination to follow its blood pouring over her chest) with trembling fingers she tore off the own inner promptings and sympathies. Like the essence latent in the buttons of her jacket, and with one hand she drew aside her taut, germ plasm, it has a life, unique and quite its own, and too much unyielding breast, with the other she guided the point of the scythe over interference from even the most sympathetic can lead only to its the floor. She crawled on her knees to the earthen wall, thrust the blunt distortion or death. Milton and Dante both began poems dedicated to end of the scythe blade into it, and throwing her arms above her head, their ideal of Christian propaganda; but both at times achieved works of pressed her chest firmly forward, forward . . . She clearly heard and felt art even at variance with their original design. So did Sholokhov with the resisting, cabbage-like scrunch of the rending flesh; a rising wave his two interesting and instructive novels. They are no more of intense pain flowed over her breast to her throat, and pressed with propaganda than Zola Le Débâcle, and no less, and in some ways more ringing needles into her cars . . . intimately realistic. 'Realistic'--take these two paragraphs, both from And Quiet Flows the Don. The one describes the taste and smell of Here is the difference between realism of, say a trained Zola, early spring. The other is a forlorn attempt at suicide by a half-crazed and a naive realism of a son of the soil he so intimately describes. Zola woman. is the scientific journalist describing vividly what he sees. Only at rare intervals does his imagination pass over and become part of the scene. But above the blood-soaked White Russia the stars wept Sholokhov is the native, a peasant brought up from infancy in the North mournfully. The nocturnal darkness yawned smokily and fluidly. The Caucasus, a Cossack villager, the participator in the actions he so wind fawned on the earth, saturated with the scent of fallen leaves, of movingly pictures in writing with a pen dipped in his own blood. His damp, clayey mouldiness, of March snows. horizon is limited unlike that of the international journalist, but within it he cannot be surpassed, and, except by Gorky and Dostoevsky, rarely Stumbling over the uneven stones, followed by a shameful, equalled even by the masters of Russian realism. He is 'socialist.' For filthy whisper, she reached the church porch. The girls standing in the he was a spectator of the part Russia played in the Great War. He saw porch giggled as she turned and made her way to the farther gate. and understood the two revolutions: the first which broke the Russian Swaying drunkenly, she ran home. At the yard gate she took breath and autocracy and set up the first socialist republic under Kerensky, then then entered, stumbling over the hem of her skirt, biting her lips till the the Bolshevist revolution led by Lenin and Trotsky which set up the blood came. Through the lilac darkness the open doorway of the shed present Union of Soviet States. He saw, too, all of the counter- yawned blackly. With evil determination she gathered her last strength, revolution of the Whites until all opposition had been suppressed and ran to the door and hastily stepped across the threshold. The shed was Russia was made comparatively safe for communism. Then came his dry and cold, smelling of leather harness and long-lying straw. experiences, still in his native Cossack villages, with the efforts of the Gropingly, without thought or feeling, in a sombre yearning which leaders of the Soviet Union to regain the power and the efficiency of scratched at her shamed and despairing soul, she made her way to a the old regime; the effort at co-operative farming, the expulsion of the corner. There she picked up a scythe by the handle, removed the blade Kulaks, the relatively wealthy individual farmers, and the five year (her movements were deliberately assured and precise), and throwing plan. By then he had written his first descriptive sketches and his first back her head, with all the force and joyous resolution that possessed great novel,(248)And Quiet Flows the Don. He became famous first in

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Russia, and was acclaimed by Gorky as the type of Socialist writer the made an embodiment of all the unsocialistic vices. He becomes the nation needed. For his sympathies are with the cause he had fought for, secret guest of Yakov Ostrovnov, called Lukich, who in many ways is and he catches the spirit of enthusiasm that fired the miscellaneous the most interesting character in the novel. Lukich is a most successful peasants and riders of the steppes and made of them a People. The farmer; from one nearly destitute at the redistribution of the land, he mood can be lyrical, as in the passage that opens this chapter. has shown his native ability and resourcefulness and is growing rich and prosperous. He, with his excellent individualism, secretly longs for Perhaps for the sake of clearness it may be better to begin with the old days, when such power as his could make itself secure. But he his lesser known but later work. It has fewer lines and its purpose can can't throw in his lot whole-souled with the counter-revolutionists; for be summarized more easily, The Seeds of Tomorrow. It is the story of when the experiment of collective farming is once begun, because of how the five year plan came to a small Cossack village in the North his innate ability, he is put in charge of all the field operations. He Caucasus, Gremyachy Log, and the effort to induce the villagers, becomes manager, and as he watches the infant social industry grow is individualists all of them at first, to adopt the new role of collective filled with paternal pride. The natural leader, even under a hated farmers. One must remember the hunger of the Russian peasant for institution, he finds his talent recognized, so he makes himself a place land, and how the first and second revolutions were made possible by even against his instinct, for the glory of communism and its increase. the farmers' appropriation of the land of the old landlords. One must remember the restless individualism of the Cossack, a free rider from Then there is Davidov, the chairman of the collective farm, a time immemorial, and for centuries the bulwark of the throne. One true-blue soviet organizer. He had in the old days been a mechanic, a must remember his age-long conservatism, in all matters including true proletarian of the city industry, now turned loose to organize farming. Into this little self-contained, self-satisfied, and proud farmers in what is to him an utterly foreign mode of life and thought. community comes the news of the new effort for the good of a Even the language of the fields and woods to this man of the factory community far beyond their borders and to them foreigners and and tenements is foreign. Here we have a chance again for character despised; it comes like a bursting shell, bringing dismay, bitterness, and distortion, as with the White enemy of the People. But his enthusiasm even active hostility. Yet in the end the scheme succeeds, because it is is real. He has his moments even of despondency; he is resourceful, he socialistic, for the people. All this is journalism written feelingly from knows human nature. He can speak the word in season that will within, a perfect transcript of one effort made among thousands for the strengthen the wavering. It is to his sleepless care and his humane common good, the education of an undistinguished village in the understanding of when to be severe and when to slacken discipline that meaning of socialism. All the characters for such an intimate little the whole plan(250)owes its success, success even beyond hope. Other drama are there; and because the community is small and each soviet officials are less enthusiastically described. The president of the neighbor knows all there is to know of the neighbors, it is an intimate local soviet, with his unfortunate domestic history; the violent and drama, and cannot be otherwise than sympathetic to the writer's utterly ill-advised Nagulnov, the secretary of the local soviet, who imagination. His own experiences are all there.(249) would have wrecked the whole scheme by his enthusiastic ill-temper.

We are first introduced to Polovtsief, a White aristocrat, There is the Kulak Borodin and his errant son. Here the evident engaged in an effort in this one-time stronghold of Czarist imperialism human sympathy of the author breaks into pity for the misfortune of to start a counter-revolution. To be sure he is not an attractive figure, both. Borodin is no villain, but a good neighbor, and his effort to save rude, offensive, and drunken; but he is not inhuman, and though he his well-won property, when all is being confiscated for the state, fails miserably, he is not, as in so much Soviet caricature of the Whites, deserves pity. Even the enthusiasts break into tears over the old man's

111 fate. But Davidov, who has just told of the misery of his childhood and All this reads, when described as it is here, as an example of the his mother who sold herself for her children, stops them: 'You think it uplift novel once so popular; or the roman ὰ thèse. And it is, but with a is a pity we're cleaning out the Kulak families? Think again! We're sharp difference, because the events, trifling as most of them are when cleaning them out so they shan't prevent our organizing a life without seen separately, in the mass are the history of contemporary Russia. any of those . . . So it shan't happen again in the future.' There is There were thousands of Gremyachy Logs, and there must have been tragedy, there is comedy; and there is pure pathos. The comic old man, thousands of Davidovs, too, or the story of the half generation since the a chronic liar, Sheherkar, and his advice that in the interest of five year plan was broached would have been a different story and the efficiency the women hatch the eggs. Then these words from the wrecker might have prevailed. It is the realist that keeps the idealist Kondrat, who had given up his only horse: propagandist socialist within bounds. The pure uplift story, though its moral may be no more obvious, rarely keeps its feet so securely planted How will things go in the collective farms? Do they all feel and on the ground. This book is a contribution to history not unlike the see as I see that this is the only way, that there can be no turning back? diary of some private soldier. That no matter how painful it is to hand over to strangers the lean animal that has grown up with the family on the earthen floor of the I have gone rather fully into the plan of this lesser of hut, yet it has to be done. But when I reach my own horse, I begin to Sholokhov's two novels, because it illustrates better than any definition choke, and then he seems dearer to me than my own wife. And I still can do what the new revolutionary writer means by the phrase 'Socialist try to give him sweeter, finer grass. And others are just the same: each Realism.' Here we have the story in Seeds of Tomorrow of one of the pines after his own horse-- Yet there aren't any 'others' now, they're all later crises of the Soviet Union, an important episode, and yet an ours. episode. His other novel, And Quiet Flows the Don, is the epic of the War, the Revolutions, first and second, and of the futile counter- All the various devices that were tried to bring people to work revolution that serves as a fitting postlude. The quiet days on the common farm as enthusiastically as once they did on their own before(252)the war, with the life of the little village that is the hero, is are here described. Persuasion and threats had proved of no avail, so at the Prelude. But what a different epic from Homer's story of Troy or last youthful propagandist columns are imported, traveling bands of even Tolstoi War and Peace, which is the story of another of Russia's enthusiastic youth, to(251)show how to work under the new regime. great struggles. For again this novel is dominated by the same desire as They turn over an incredible number of furrows in a day, and for shame Seeds of Tomorrow, to tell of the struggles of momentous years and the the farmers come back, and the enthusiasm is infectious. There are riots triumph of socialism, and yet to keep scrupulously within the bounds of and fights for grain, and burnings. Davidov sleeplessly plans and realism. encourages, he is everywhere. The value of belonging to the party is held up as a singular favor, as we see the despair of Nagulnov when he If the story of Seeds of Tomorrow is how the five year plan and is expelled. And last we see the reason for the failure of the White the communal farm came to a little North Caucasus village, the theme conspiracy. For moderate counsels prevail, and those who were of And Quiet Flows the Don is the story of how the war and the reluctant to join the new collectives were given an extension on their Revolution came to a little village of the Don Cossacks. There is no individually held properties. Besides, though enemies of the new day, hero but the little village community, there are no moving accidents, they were Russians and loved Russia. 'The Communists are our own but the little details of farm life or soldier life, as the Cossack farmer or people, they're Russians like us.' the Cossack soldier or the Cossack farmer's wife or his mistress were swept by the tide of fire and sword out of the peaceful life of the

112 steppes into the dismay or enthusiasm of the new order. There is no wasthe chief support of the Empire and the Czar. When the revolution hero as in Homer or Tolstoi, there is none of the magnificent trappings first came it was to them that the aristocrats looked for their salvation. of the usual epic, descriptions of battles, sieges, famines, and burnings, Their atamans were their semi-feudal overlords, and the relation that make up the orthodox novel of history. We catch no glimpses between ataman and Cossack had a freedom to be found nowhere else behind the scenes of what went on in the minds of generals or in all Europe. Here then were a people as far in spirit from Marx's ideal statesmen, only the little reactions to the events in the minds of simple proletarian as could well be imagined, and as unready for a social Cossacks. We rarely see a general and never a statesman--what private revolution in which they must lose something of their freedom. The last soldier does? But we have with utmost realism the barrack-room place in the world where one would look for the success of Marxist chatter and the agony of the spent soldier awaiting death. Even the last doctrine would be here. struggles of the dying are not spared us. Here is the picture of the war as the soldier saw it, as his wife in her little hut, abandoned now by her It is the greatness of this novel that it describes the gradual man, felt it, the utter loneliness. stages by which this people was prepared for the revolutionary change in their outlook and mode of life. It took the Great War to bring about Tear the collar of your last shirt at your throat, dear heart! Tear the transformation of a people, the psychological changes gradually the hair of your head, thin with your joyless, heavy life; bite your lips taking place under the pressure of events, privations, cruelties, blood- till the blood comes; wring your work-scarred hands and beat yourself lust, and animal lust(254), war, revolution, civil war, and counter- against the floor on the threshold of your empty hut! The master is revolution, it took all this to transform the Cossack unthinking missing from your hut, your husband (253)is missing, your children are cavalryman into a revolutionary patriot. The book makes the process fatherless; and remember that no-one will caress you or your orphans, clear and convincing. But it does justice at the same time to those who no-one will press your head to his breast at night, when you drop worn could not or would not change. The adversaries who tried to strangle out with weariness; and no-one will say to you as once he said: 'Don't the new Bolshevism at its birth are not described as White villains. worry, Aniska, we'll manage somehow!' You will not get another They are the same breed of plainsmen, and often quite as admirable in husband, for labour, anxieties, children have withered you and lined their generous self-sacrifice. you. No father will come for your half-naked, snivelling children. You yourself will have to do all the plowing, the dragging, panting with the An epic of the annals of a community--there has been little like over-great strain. You will have to pitchfork the sheaves from the it since Manzoni wrote his prose epic, The Betrothed. The heroes are reaper, to throw them on to the wagon, to raise the heavy bundles of the hundreds, men and women, old and young, soldiers and stay-at- wheat on the pitchfork, feeling the while that something is rending homes, of the little villages of the Don. We have scenes of fishing, of beneath your belly. And afterwards you will writhe with pain, covering courtship, of marriage and separation, seed-time and harvest, life in the yourself with your rags and issuing with blood. streets, shops and taverns, the little well-to-do, the alamans, the down- and- out, all this and then the scenes of violence of the war and the These Cossacks and their old freedom-loving life, a life that scenes of abandon beyond the lines and in rest billets. It is a sum of all Sholokhov himself knew from within. They were not peasants but a the mixed emotions and motives that made up a people's life during semi-nomadic, free people, loving the life of the steppes, and five or six ominous years. There are no large national issues, only the cultivating the spirit of self-respect and democracy. They were the sum of the little ones that go to give complexion and worth to a village, bulwark of Russia against the Tartars, and tradition and myth is full of at peace and at war. It isn't all Russia that passes in review, as in their exploits; hard riders, hard fighters, their cavalry for centuries

113

Tolstoi War and Peace, but a forgotten fragment of Russia; yet how an animal unless it's necessary, but destroy man! He's a heathen, much more detail there is to the panorama. It is stark realism. unclean; he poisons the earth; his life is like a toadstool!'

The novel falls into four divisions: Peace, the days and months To the historian the revolution was a thing preceded by a that preceded the war, the uneventful life of the village that gives us a number of causes, definite and to be catalogued. The soldier in the view of its inhabitants, undisturbed yet by any events from outside, revolution had no such clear-cut ideas. To him the revolution was an following the routine of the seasons, and against this their little incident, led up to by a succession of insignificant incidents, until he personal dramas. War. Suddenly there are rumors, neighbors gather to was scarcely aware that revolution is a mortal crisis in history. Such is discuss the news that comes from the world without, there is the call to Sholokhov's third section, Revolution. The little conversations that led the colors, and the young conscripts march away for the conflict that up to it, each apparently aimless, and each duplicated a million times as they neither understand nor desire to understand.(255) soldiers met and conversed.(256)

The stay-at-homes pick up the thread where the soldiers had 'One moment, Listnitskyl Bunchuk, listen! Let us admit that this dropped it. We have now the double panorama: the life at the front, and war will be transformed into a civil war. But then what? You'll what passes for life for these left behind. Never has anything been overthrow the . But what sort of government do you written so successfully of the meaninglessness of war to the average propose to set up in its place?' private soldier as in this book that never pauses to comment, but describes only the soldier's state of mind. Take this comment on a 'The government of the working class.' soldier's experience of killing his first man: 'A Parliament, do you mean?' After his first battle Gregor Melekhov was tormented by a dreary inward pain. He grew noticeably thin, lost weight, and 'Hardlyl' Bunchuk smiled. frequently, whether attacking or resting, sleeping or waking, he saw the features and form of the Austrian whom he had killed by the railings. In 'Well, what then?' his sleep he lived again and again through that first battle, and even felt the shuddering convulsion of his right hand clutching the lance. He 'A workers' dictatorship.' would awake and drive the dream off violently, shading his painfully screwed-up eyes with his hand. 'Now we've got it! But the intelligentsia, the peasantry? What part will they play?' Or this as soldiers speak during pauses in the conflict: 'The peasantry will follow us, and part of the intelligentsia also. '. . . This is the way!' Uriupin instructed him. 'Cut a man down The others . . . this is what we shall do with the others.' With a boldly! Man is as soft as butter! Don't think about the why and swift movement he screwed up a paper in his hand, and threw it the wherefore. You're a cossack, and it's your business to cut away, saying through his teeth: 'That's what we'll do with them!' down without asking questions. To kill your enemy in battle is a holy work. For every man you kill God will wipe out one of And then the last, Civil War, when Russian fought Russian until your sins, just as he does for killing a serpent. You mustn't kill the victory of Marxian Communism was complete. Again, as in the two

114 preceding sections, we have the apparent aimlessness of the events, as narrower. The gifted French author, with his knowledge of the whole of they struck the common soldier. Few had the sharpness of vision of the the life of Paris and of France, is able in that vaster epic to find a place machine-gunner Bunchuk, who from the beginning of the war saw into for both aristocrat and proletarian and all the confused and broken the future and made himself master of the gun that he might in the end strata between. Sholokhov's people are all rural, and this, because turn it against his true adversary. Most joined movements because their Russia is even today so overwhelmingly rural, is perfectly intelligible fellows did: some because they were now officers of rank in the new and proper. There is one further thought. Sholokhov's two novels fail to regime without being quite conscious what it was all about. tell us how the idea first of the revolution then of its later design came to the whole of Russia. At best therefore it is a partial epic, the epic of But as one reads incident after incident, in spite of what first rural Russia; whereas Romains's book when it is complete has the appears aimless, gradually one feels the unfolding of a great idea, the design of being the epic of contemporary France. idea of the new Russia. It is this idea that is the hero of the epic tale. The old life in Part I had been without aim, animal and selfish. There What is of further and higher significance is that it differs were no communal motives, and the squirming life of the village where scarcely at all from the works of art produced by the much- to-be- lust, love, greed, generosity, strove without thought or direction, is the condemned bourgeoisie. His sympathy never allows him to be more soil upon which the new seed is to be sown. It took war to sow it, war severe with the enemies of the true faith(258)than Homer was with the with its filth and cruelty, and the questioning that would come when enemies of the Greeks. Read a century hence, as the novel And Quiet soldiers would lie afield at night, the painful birth of the new idea. It Flows the Don may be, it will require a historian to pick out the threads grew and bore fruit(257)in the revolution, and though each individual of propaganda, and this is a long cry from the devotion to a class war revolutionary soldier might not know more than a pittance of its that the revolutionary writers' creed seems to require. As the later meaning, in the aggregate of revolutionary soldiers the idea came to Tolstoi in reviewing the work of his youth and mature manhood full maturity and power. It sweeps away every opposition and condemned Anna Karenina because it did not square with his later enthusiastically, though crudely, finds its name and place. But every views of art, so the consistent Communist in theory must see much that latent opposition to the new idea must be withstood and annihilated, is lacking in Sholokhov's novels, and sadly shake his head over the until it may have full scope for its manifest destiny. Hence the epilogue inveterate tradition of art that even fifteen years of a Soviet regime of the Civil War, for there can be no peace until Russia is made safe for cannot undo. the new doctrine. Such is the scope and dramatic movement of this People's epic.Since this has been in the press a sequel to this novel has But to us, on the other hand, may come the exhilaration of appeared, The Don Flows Home to the Sea. It is the story of the most realizing the impossibility of ever fettering the human imagination. important of the characters in its predecessor, Gregor Melekhov, in the There have been many who have expressed the fear that in the perfect revolt of the Cossacks against the Soviet regime. There is in it all the organization of the perfect state the imagination is ultimately power in the predecessor. But something is lacking. The novel has a smothered. Aldous Huxley has pictured this human abyss in his Brave hero, and it is always his story. He is an untamed individualist. The New World. There are prophets, even those who are sympathizing story ends when alone and without hope he returns, a fugitive, to his Communists, who shake their heads anxiously. It is well enough for a village. This novel is far closer to the old tradition of the novel. Sholokhov, they say, whose early imagination had the freedom of an earlier regime that produced Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and But this is in no way different from the theme of Jules Gorky. He had them for background. But the young whose background Romains's Men of Good Will, except that its social scope is much is the new education aimed expressly to produce perfect citizens of the

115 new state, what of them who have never known any other? Everything dictators armed with the latest equipment of biology and psychology, else can be organized, education, higher studies, associations, social may be left to the future. Past history gives little encouragement to conditions, but if the creative spirit is offered violence 'it avenges itself either answer.(260) with mediocrity.' Is this a danger that lurks for the future when the new revolutionists get their dream of the perfect state? FAITH OF OUR FATHERS XIII

They might well give the same answer as the director of the T. S. ELIOT Brave New World, that in such a state art is a quite unnecessary luxury. And the votaries of art are left even without a question. 'The eyes are not here There are no eyes here André Gide, professed Communist, but much more confirmed In this valley of dying stars (259)artist, is appalled at the very real danger of the effort at In this hollow valley uniformity. To him the advice of one of its officers was full of This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms.' foreboding: 'What we want nowadays are works everyone can understand, and understand immediately . . . An artist in our country THE HOLLOW MEN must first of all keep in line.' Precisely, keep in line. But can art conform? Does even Sholokhov or Gorky conform always? After the 'Who is the third who walks always beside you? first enthusiasm of creating a new world, will not the artist nearly When I count, there are only you and I together always take new thought and discover within himself the seeds of But when I look ahead up the white road future opposition. But, 'what will happen if the transformation of the There is always another one walking beside you social state deprives the artist of all motives for opposition?' Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman One wonders, and again I quote Gide: 'Humanity is not uniform, we --But who is that on the other side of you?' must make up our minds to that; and any attempt to simplify, to unify, to reduce it from the outside will always be odious, ruinous, and THE WASTE LAND disastrously grotesque'(Nouveatix Prétextes).Isn't this an argument that there can never be perfect communist art? The alternative is too ONE OF the most significant chapters in Jules Romains Men of unpleasant to contemplate, even for Gide. 'If the mind is obliged to Good Will has the title 'In Search of a Church.' In the good old days of obey a word of command, it can at any rate feel that it is not free. But if the Middle Ages men built churches to keep out fear. The world was it has been so manipulated beforehand that it obeys without even evil, diabolic in its ugliness--and the history of that day left little room waiting for the word of command, it loses even the consciousness of its for the saving graces--and doubly sinister in its beauty, for the lure of enslavement.' True, but it is also true that it is not only in the the senses was of the devil's design, and woe to him who abandoned his Communist State of Russia where such things may happen. It may be soul for their gratification. So men built churches, staunch edifices, blind folly to assert that it can't happen here. Whether these gloomy proof against time as the heaven- guarded soul, and adorned with predictions shall be justified by the event, or on the other hand, whether beauty to recall the unearthly splendor of paradise. These castles of the human nature by its long and varied experience has made any effort at soul were the cities of refuge for periodic flight from the unseemliness perfect standardization and perfect routine too difficult even for of things as they are, as redoubtable as the castles and walled cities of

116 refuge for the body. Dante's great poem closes with the cosmic the needs of a world that again feels itself raw and new and tragically panorama of the rose of the church, everlasting(261)and beautiful beset. beyond mortal words--rank on rank, range on range of the fragrant petals of saints triumphant, basking now, loosed from all fear, in the In consequence these last years have seen a revival of interest in radiance of infinite and eternal Truth. the philosophy and theology, as well as the poetry, of the Middle Ages that is quite beyond the interest of mere history or philosophy. Schools Yes, life in the Middle Ages, in spite of pestilence and war, was have devoted themselves to a restudy and revaluation of the once happy, happy for it had within its faith a freedom from fear; and in that despised old Christian Fathers, Augustine, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus, happiness built the churches and founded the Tradition. And, that the and above all the Angelic Doctor, Thomas Aquinas; not that they may tale be complete, cleverly and dexterously as a master craftsman, it read the old speculations aright, but that these may be retested and gave living form to a philosophy which should be equally absolute, as restated in the light of today, and our wayward and bewildered world its ultimate justification before God and Man. Tradition, Philosophy, once again may be offered the path to salvation. It is a call back to the Church, three in one, to give freedom and instruction and salvation to a Christian tradition, very different from the romantic revival of the world else enslaved, blind, and doomed. The centuries that followed religion, let us say of John Wesley, in the eighteenth, or later in the questioned, scoffed at, and often seemed on the point of wrecking nineteenth century, with its emphasis on man's personal relation to forever this magnificent edifice. Lust of the flesh was always its God, the Inner Voice, and the ecstasy of conversion. On the contrary, enemy; but slowly, as time passed, the new science, lust of the intellect, this path follows the less picturesque and pedestrian lowlands of seemed to contradict its very foundations, and never so much as in syllogism and demonstrable proof. It is far more concerned with right these our own decades, until there were many who wrote its epitaph, thinking than with right feeling, for it is convinced first and foremost and reckoned the Christian tradition as one more effort, like Buddha or that the human propensity to error in thought must first be put to a Islam, to compass the impossible, and read meaning and worth into severe schooling. And again in this the new movement is perfectly in things that are in themselves devoid of both. line with the argument of the Middle Ages.More than once in the Inferno Dante makes it clear that the neglect of reason was the cause of Yet this very denial has in it the elements of man's bitterest the eternal woe. They were the lost people, lost because they have lost tragedy. There have been many who have pressed the issue. Either life 'the good of the understanding.' is full of meaning and value, or the whole story of man from its dawn is an ironic jest. If, as our deepest instinct seems to crave, there is in it It would be interesting to follow the thought of the neo- something more than the fortuitous and irrelevant, then there must be Thomists in some detail. Their leaders, like Maritain and Gilso n, have some absolute meaning in the long story of the unfolding human made an epoch in modern philosophy. But this is not the place to tradition. And as that tradition received its richest gifts from the discuss philosophy or metaphysics and their connection with ethics. It Greeks, and later from the philosophers, poets, and artists of the Middle is the effect of this new school of thought on creative literature that is Ages and after, perhaps again the human miracle may be achieved, and of prime significance; and this effect has been enormous. For in more humanity in its contemporary need, be again loosed from the clutch of than one(263)country in Europe today it is true, as André Berge evil and fear. There are many who to avoid the bitterness of tragedy asserted of France, that young men, who a half generation ago would demand a(262)return to tradition and faith. Search for a Church, but have prided themselves on their disbelief of any of the traditions of one suited, with the advance in knowledge since the Middle Ages, to religion, today in increasing numbers are returning to the traditional church. The same thing is happening in England; and one may notice

117 its beginning in America. There is, and the movement is slowly evil world; the other is steep and arduous, and requires the complete acquiring speed, a return to the church. For in its beliefs, and in the transformation of man's intelligence and will in the ascending circles of logic of its creeds and their postulates, there is the promise of security discipline. How different this from the easy creed of the romantic and freedom from fear; so the argument runs, a new-old gospel for a nineteenth century, the active belief that man is by nature good, and the world again in mortal peril. state of human blessedness can be achieved only by unchaining the instincts of nature with which all are endowed, and by listening to their For the axioms and postulates of traditional Christianity, like still, small, and inner voice. It is interesting and greatly significant how the threads that make a pattern, lie closest to the needs of the human more and more to these new Catholics, and a hord of others, Dante heart. And as without axioms there can be no geometry, without these becomes the poet of the age and his Inferno the spiritual allegory of unquestioned Christian acceptances there can be no right thinking today's confusion. Its cure must be discovered in a new Purgatory. But, about human destiny. One does not accept these as a faith that is to and perhaps because this revived faith is yet young and unfledged, the serve as a superstructure to science and philosophy; one accepts them full experience of an achieved Paradise is yet denied, though some in order that there might be a better and more human science and have seen the rosy fingers of its anticipated dawn. philosophy. For without them science and philosophy lack meaning and plan and even value. The first and fundamental axiom is that there is In one way it is unfair to class T. S. Eliot among the neo- meaning in the world and some end toward which all creation moves. Catholics. It might be more appropriate to select one of their foremost The world then is not a cosmically irrelevant and fortuitous congeries writers in French, Maritain for example. For Eliot is an Anglo-Catholic, of electrons, protons, and neutrons, as unaided science is compelled to and to some there is a world of difference. But so far as fundamental assert. Then there is the axiom of a cosmic dignity and worth that beliefs are concerned, the schism from Rome is almost an irrelevancy, willy-nilly clings to every individual, human worth and human dignity and the differences are geographical, political, and liturgical, affecting in the panorama of this created universe. Next, that love and only particulars of creed and philosophy. Like the new Catholics Eliot understanding when loosed from error are one--how this reminds of sees that the evils of the world are due to the deeply ingrained habit of Dante. It is only the disabled intellect, or the mired heart, that sees them lust after strange gods, and that(265)these evils can be cured only by separate and at times in conflict. And finally that without these right religious beliefs. In other words there can be no improvement in fundamental axioms all life and all nature are reduced to a meaningless morals until the world is set right by a true theology and philosophy, puzzle, and human nature to a futile gesture. Simple, superbly simple, two sciences, but also one and inseparable. and yet how thorough-going and all embracing.Yet how all of them are beyond the reach(264)of the most daring speculator armed only with Frankly it is hard for the beginner, with the best will in the the human instrument, reason. For these axioms are supernatural world and no little poetic background, to read the poetry of T. S. Eliot. revelations--they did not come by chance--revelations to the end that He is hard, deliberately obscuring his thought, even at times to the humanity might put aside fear and arrive at salvation (The discerning extent of perversity. For he has no patience with the reader who comes reader will see at once that I have translated rather freely the usual to poetry as a pastime or a relaxation, as to the fragrance of coffee and theological wording of these axioms. See Etienne Gilson on this theme cigarettes after a meal. He requires work, a complete absorption in the in his admirable Spirit of the Mediæval Philosophy). poem and the context, and a pursuit through a labyrinth of phrase and allusion. He carries the weight of the tradition of European poetry from They are the theme of Dante: Salvation and Damnation. The the days of the Greeks; and a chance phrase, redolent of Homer, Dante, one is easy and natural to the fallen state of man in a remorseless and or Baudelaire, must be savored, not alone as part of the poem in hand,

118 but also in memory as the melodic richness of an old theme sounding distilled into poetry, is the effort of Eliot The Waste Land and The its ghostly undertone of ideas in the new refrain. Unless the reader's ear Hollow Men. These are the images, these are the associations, these are is exceeding fine to catch this larger symphony, suggested and guessed the ideas that we feel, you and I, if we are keen enough and gifted with only, he fails to read aright what on the printed page seems simple and imagination. These are the broken rhythms, minglings of the stately and downright. T. S. Eliot has perhaps gone farther than any of the moderns melodious old with the abrupt and discordant new, as we live in the in English to explore the witchery of allusive words and make them do confused jar and turmoil of contemporary urban life. Relevant and service in the cause of poetry. apparently irrelevant, beauty and grotesque ugliness, sweetness and stench of bitterness, all these tread on each others' toes, in this swiftly More than this--his poems seem to be in the process of moving kaleidoscope of contemporary poetry. In these as in Gerontion becoming poetry, where 'free associations' are being formed, sans logic, and Prufrock Eliot is one of the most contemporary of contemporary sans design, to which the poet later should give logic and design in a poets.(267) finished poem. In The Hollow Men, for example, we see image, quite without conscious reason, from the depths of the subconscious, as it Our dried voices, when were, calling up image, as one bell set to ringing sets all others that We whisper together may be in tune to hum to spontaneous music; and echo calls up echo Are quiet and meaningless from still greater distance. The reader must lend himself to this 'free As wind in dry grass association,' asking neither why nor how. Thus in this poem are Or rats' feet over broken glass mingled 'memory and despair,' the(266)poignancy of futile memory In our dry cellar. . . . with all its suggested images and the poignancy of despair. And, in this These do not appear: case, to anyone who has never feelingly read The Divine Comedy, and There, the eyes are above all The Inferno, that monument to memory and despair, The Sunlight on a broken column Hollow Men will always be in part an unintelligible and wayward maze There, is a tree swinging of irreconcilables. T. S. Eliot is confessedly difficult if one wants to And voices are find in him the orderliness of image and association that one finds, for In the wind's singing example, in Keats. More distant and more solemn Than a fading star. But T. S. Eliot, great as is his debt to tradition, is a contemporary poet. And contemporary life is not orderly. We are Like the others whom we have glanced at in these chapters, reminded more than once of the difficulties in Shakespeare's sonnets, Eliot, in despair at the meaningless grotesqueness and ugliness and where the poems grew out of great perplexities and invite a varied death in contemporary life, is in search for some new motive that will gloss. Again, Eliot is an urban poet. The old poetry, English and give life meaning, for some bond that will give form and coherence to European, except Dante, was primarily rural. Wordsworth and Shelley the contemporary chaos. He is not content, as some, to paint the and Keats, oppressed by the weight of contemporary urban life and its disorder and go into detail about the symptoms: there is in him enough ugliness, fled to the fields of Westmorland or to their fancy. The of the old New England Puritan who gave his life to make contemporary poets--there are many exceptions--as well as the righteousness and the will of God prevail. Only for a period, as The novelists, strive to catch the confusion that is the contemporary urban Last Puritan, was he in doubt about the meaning of righteousness and mind. This is the effort in Joyce Ulysses; but much better, for it is the existence of an intelligent and righteous God. And when there came

119 an end to his doubts and his search proved successful, it was the But it is a culture through long discipline, a training of the tradition of righteousness and the God of the Christian Catholic faith whole nature of man to a perfect harmony. The original man, now no that he found. It will be interesting to follow the genesis and exodus of longer theologically damned through sin, is morally and intellectually his quest, and though perhaps he, like a prophet of old, has had little damned through lack of culture, for his moral and intellectual ugliness, more than a brief glimpse of the Promised Land, it will be instructive to not theological shortcomings. There was no angry God to appease, but hear his sincere exhortation. a moral and intellectual ideal. The world is by nature abandoned to a moral and intellectual chaos; only by severe discipline can human T. S. Eliot was a student and, later, a friend and disciple of the nature be regenerated and beauty and harmony be made to prevail, and late Irving Babbitt. But because he was also a poet he could not remain righteousness. So Arnold clung with the more passion, because he saw unquestioning in his discipleship. For the one thing, and an essential, that its appeal would fall(269)on deaf ears in a world too obtuse for its that is lacking in the vision of life, as Professor Babbitt defined it, is acceptance, to what might be called the tradition of human excellence. poetry. Oil and(268)water cannot mix, and one cannot be a confessed It is an unbroken tradition: it began before the Greeks, the Greeks New Humanist of the school of Babbitt and at the same time cherish deeply enriched it, and passed it on to a world not prepared to foster it. and mature the spirit of poetry. So Eliot fell away from the strict sect of Yet the tradition endured; there had been many who catching its full the modern Sadduccees, and it is of this temptation and fall, as also of import had carried its torch of light down, yes, to his own day. It is the that of a remote ancestor of the human race, that much can be made in duty of each cultivated soul to be a torch bearer, to the end that this way of comment on the nature of man. For Babbitt in turn was of the tradition of human excellence be not lost in a world almost wholly school of Matthew Arnold. Philistine and barbarian.

Now Arnold had broken with precisely half of the old Christian There is something exquisitely persuasive in the melancholy tradition. Mournfully, even tragically, under the pressure of modern eloquence of Arnold. A little more resolutely, Irving Babbitt took the science, he had questioned orthodox Christianity, in a day when its same theme, suiting it a trifle more accurately to the twentieth century, dogma and faith seemed inconsistent with the evidence of the new a little less sympathetic with the Germans whom Arnold admired, and geology and biology. Like the ancient Latin poet Lucretius, he saw the admitting more of the lucid generosity of the French. But at best this story of religion beset with innumerable superstitions and gross humanist tradition, that Arnold, Babbitt, and others cherished, had little cruelties. How can a man of modern culture do otherwise than deny to offer to warm the heart and light the imagination of a poet. Eliot what seems to show so little to commend it to a tolerant understanding? never wholeheartedly accepted the New Humanism. It fatally divided So he turned with the greater zeal to the other and richer half of the the nature of man and left one half, and that vital and living and tradition, the tradition of urbane culture. For his model of a culture that demanding warmth and comfort, alone in a comfortless and chilling meets all human demands and calls for the richest possible attainment void. of human personality, he selected the Greeks, and for the perfect man 'who saw life steadily and saw it whole,' he set up Sophocles. Here was For to Eliot, after he saw the light, the tradition of religious faith something human and attainable, to replace the superhuman and is as real as the tradition of culture, and each great age of culture is also legendary, a humanist model to point the way to salvation through an age of great faith. Even Sophocles, the model for all humanistic culture. aspiration, was a poet with a profound reverence for the gods, and his last poem-drama, the Oedipus at Colonus, is a mystical beatific vision as real as any caught by the saints of the Middle Ages. No, if there is a

120 tradition of culture, it is wedded, so Eliot and others argue, to the But how discover and apply an ultimate test to the truth of tradition of religious faith and belief in a power that makes for order religion thus announced as the key to the meaning and the chart for the and righteousness. And these two halves of the tradition are divorced conduct of life? The test is human experience,(271) and to explore this only at tragic peril. Yet more, the reason the present age is without plan avenue Eliot the poet becomes also the essayist and controversialist. and order and meaning is precisely because it has lost its religious Because the argument runs downright and logical in the prose essays, faith.(270)The upholders of the Catholic tradition argue further that and their purpose is the evident one to convince, it is well to glance at there was one serious oversight in the contentions of the thinkers of the the main theme as it appears in some of his latest and most impressive nineteenth and the twentieth centuries who rejected religion because its essays. beliefs were inconsistent with science. For ultimately there must be no quarrel between these two necessary factors in human life. Only like Jules Romains in his Men of Good Will, III, has an interesting two different dimensions, the values and standards of measurement in comment on the necessity of mystery in a religion: the one are inapplicable in the other. Arnold failed, as many others have failed, to reconcile science and religion because he strove to use Credo quia absurdum. The Incomprehensible, if it is the food of reason in order that he might arrive at faith. To reason in order that we faith for the soul, is also a reserve of reality for the universe. If might believe is to invert the process. Rather one believes that he may everything were understood, everything would be finished. the more rightly employ his reason. And this truth, which Dante and the Complete intelligibility would be, in a way, the end of the Middle Ages understood fully, was forgotten when the new empirical world. science gave a new method to scientific verification. So Eliot embraced the creed of the Anglo-Catholics, who represent, to him, the vital link The danger of this sentiment, or of its excess, is that it tends to in the tradition of religion that binds the past to the present and make religion a romantic experience of the feelings, more like the anticipates the future. ecstasy of the mystery of the dark and unfamiliar, than the clear axiomatic thing the new Catholics strive to make it. Mystery there will For this tradition too has its discipline of repentance to be, like the mystery of the postulates of geometry, over which only the salvation. And the moral of this, one can read in his poems: turn from trained mathematician can grow ecstatic. And T. S. Eliot quotes with the crass confusion of the world, cleanse one's motives, and discover an approval the words of Hulme, an English traditionalist: end for life above and beyond the individual. Catholicism has its creed and philosophy, intellectual, not sentimental or romantic, symbolized in I hold the religious conception of ultimate values to be right, the the art of its sacraments and liturgies. For religion without intellectual humanist wrong. From the nature of things, these categories are content is perfume without a flower, or a refrain without meaning. And not inevitable, like the categories of time and space, but are the once despised word theology, which to the nineteenth century more equally objective. In speaking of religion, it is to this level of and more seemed to have originated in fairyland, now begins again to abstraction that I wish to refer. I have none of the feelings of take its place as the queen of the sciences, the foundation and the nostalgia, the reverence for tradition, the desire to recapture the superstructure of human intellectual achievement. Without it the labor sentiment of Fra Angelico, which seems to animate most of science and art is in vain, for it alone can supply them with adequate modern defenders of religion. All that seems to me to be bosh. meaning and value. What is important, is what nobody seems to realize--the dogmas like that of Original Sin, which are the closest expression of the categories of the religious attitude. That man is in no sense

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perfect, but a wretched creature, who can yet apprehend another philosopher of the same rank--Charles Maurras--and might, perfection. It is not, then, that I put up with the dogma for the indeed, correct some of the extravagances of that writer. sake of the sentiment, but that I may possibly swallow the sentiment for the sake of the dogma. For there will always be the passionate dissatisfaction with life unless some spiritual, as opposed to a purely secular, explanation can These dogmas are mysteries, but not mysteries as some be found. And Catholic Christianity is the best, the only full spiritual medieval saints conceived them, before which the explanation. Here are Eliot's words:(273) contemplative(272)soul knelt transfixed with ecstasy, until all Heaven unrolled its panorama of mystery. As I said before, the modern He finds the world to be so and so; he finds its character Catholic gets few and only faint glimpses of heaven. The dogmas are to inexplicable by any non-religious theory: among religions he him as objective and cool as the mysteries of mathematics. But perhaps finds Christianity, and Catholic Christianity, to account most they are far more important than any vision of heaven. For in them are satisfactorily for the world and especially for the moral world the very foundations of all living and thinking, and without them life within; and thus, by what Newman calls 'powerful and loses content and meaning. concurrent' reasons, he finds himself inexorably committed to the dogma of the Incarnation. So Eliot goes about his argument coolly, apparently quite dispassionately, sometimes being even dry and pedantic in his Its church is the 'repository of wisdom.' In that Catholic world submission to theology and religion, quite different from the poet of of true faith, even pessimism and despair, as they were to Pascal, again flashing intuition. It is as though two different persons, almost can be the best prelude to faith and final peace. And final peace can antithetical, were at work. And here is the greatest difference between come only through the satisfaction of the whole being. him and his master Dante. Dante is at his best when he blends, as no Christian poet before or since ever blended, theology and poetry. But I can think of no Christian writer, not Newman even, more to be commended than Pascal to those who doubt, but who have the Like Dante Eliot is in search of peace. It cannot come on the mind to conceive, and the sensibility to feel, the disorder, the futility, path of Babbitt's New Humanism. For the humanistic view is only the meaninglessness, the mystery of life and suffering, and who can auxiliary to the Christian. only find peace through a satisfaction of the whole being.

But my purpose has been, not to predict a bad end for Mr. The trouble, then, with the contemporary world and Babbitt's philosophy, but to point out the direction which I think it contemporary literature, like most contemporary philosophy, is that it is should follow if the obscurities of 'humanism' were cleared up. It purely 'secular,' and content to be secular. And he follows this should lead, I think, to the conclusion that the humanistic point of view argument to its orthodox conclusion in the essays he entitles After is auxiliary to and dependent upon the religious point of view. For us, Strange Gods. The only cure is tradition and orthodoxy. Even 'a spirit religion is of course Christianity; and Christianity implies, I think, the of excessive tolerance'--the ideal of all liberalism since Montaigne--is conception of the Church. It would be not only interesting but to be deprecated; in its place there must prevail a resolute search for invaluable if Professor Babbitt, with his learning, his great ability, his and cultivation of a higher authority than the individual. In spite of influence, and his interest in the most important questions of the time, Eliot's persuasiveness, the mind of the thoughtful reader snaps to could reach this point. His influence might thus join with that of questioning attention. To what does this argument lead? Are we again

122 faced with the centuries-old quarrel between Protestant and Catholic? In this, again, he does what Dante, even more than Milton, did Is the Anglo in Eliot's Anglo- Catholic swallowed by the word it in his poetry. Like Dante great poem The Divine Comedy, Eliot poetry, qualifies? There was once an old adage, all roads lead to Rome; has from The Hollow Men to Murderin the Cathedral(275)in the Cathedral Eliot set his foot on a highway that can have only one ending? There and his latest East Coker, Burnt Norton, and The Dry Salvages, is a have been those who have said that though he speaks in the person of single poem and comment on the poet's life, his path that led from the an English critic and poet, the voice is that of a(274)mitred ecclesiastic- error and confusion of this world through Hell and Purgatory to the -a race not notable for tolerant liberalism. There is yet something more blessed vision. To read Dante's poem aright one must peruse with more that comes with perplexing insistency. Is not this persistent appeal for than diligent care the comment he has left us on his life and times in the intolerant orthodoxy but a part of a much larger movement with many, Vita Nuova and the Convito. There we see him at war with the sinister and some very unpleasant faces? Is his demand for a return to one and secular influences that surrounded him. It was 'Error's Wood,' tradition in the world of spirit essentially different from the same break because it was purely a secular life, and a temporary contentment with with the tradition of tolerance in the political and economic world, purely secular philosophies. It is no wonder, when in his progress which today is promoting the ambitions of totalitarianisms and through the Inferno he makes step by step his confession of errors, that submission to their authority? There have been times when to me this his most severe self-condemnation comes early, just before he entered excessive zeal for Catholic orthodoxy has resembled a spiritual the Hell of the Heretics. There only the vigilance of the Poet Virgil, his fascism. The story of this is a long one and painful in its context. Even guide, kept him from being lost and turned to stone. when Eliot writes that much modern literature is the result of 'exposure to the diabolic influence,' what he really means may be endorsed quite Hell for Dante is the suffering necessary as a prelude to heartily, namely that many contemporaries are positively harmful, but salvation and peace. Such suffering is part of the divine plan for one can take exception to the inquisitorial manner in which judgment is unregenerate humanity, that they may see, with no veil to obscure, the passed. ugliness of sin. Evil must be stripped of all of its false allure and stand before the poet naked, grotesque, and unashamed, not that he may When we turn from his prose, and his controversial prose recoil at its horror and stand in judgment--Dante never judges but once- especially, to his poetry we enter, as I said, upon a new and more -but that he may suffer in mind and body the moral illness that is arresting region. Here is that vitality and conviction that speaks with necessary before the discipline of Purgatory can be begun. It is this the full personality, that is lacking when he argues. Here is the material, thought, I think, that T. S. Eliot has in mind when, speaking of Pascal, the idea, that gives body to the poem, but it is left completely he spoke of despair as 'a necessary prelude to faith.' From this point of etherialized by the living quality of the emotion that is its view, then, Eliot Inferno is The Hollow Men, The Waste Land, accompaniment, and a striving for the right word, the right image, and Gerontion, and Prufrock. And as Dante's Hell is unlit by even the the right rhythm. There is unevenness, at times crudeness even, more vestige of hope, cosmic waste with no redeeming quality, so Eliot's often inconclusiveness, which, added to wilful obscurity that at times early poems, and especially The Hollow Men, are the bleakest seems a pose, may keep Eliot from being a great and finished poet; but expressions in contemporary literature of irrelevant waste and despair poet he is and perhaps the most significant of our English and that knows not its emptiness. Here is life, devoted to the purely secular, American contemporaries. He has known the tradition, and from its reduced to its lowest terms and shown up in its ultimate arid futility. perspective discovered the futile welter of contemporary life. But like Dante in The Inferno(276), the poet is not one of the damned, not because he has been guiltless of sin, but because he understands, knows the meaning of this cosmic disorder, and can feel the pain of its

123 meaninglessness and how completely it is at variance with the divine Burnt Norton, and The Dry Salvages; and the final triumph of the order. This seems to be the significance of the 'Fire Sermon' in The church finds its theme in the lyrics that Eliot wrote for The Rock. Waste Land; its comment is not unlike the comment of the poet Virgil as he leads Dante through the labyrinth of the damned. But Dante's vision of Purgatory and the Church was only that there might be added the great summation of all human experience, the To the orthodox tradition, the suffering of Hell is the necessary cosmic vision of the All, and the discovery of the divine harmony of prelude to the pain and discipline of humility, renunciation, and the universe. Man's place in a redeemed universe, where 'the love that repentance. One does not need to be a theologian to accept the theme of moves the sun and every star' is seen to be the same love that moves in Dante's Purgatory. Its theology fits perfectly into any rational the heart of man and has made the pageant of human history. But to see philosophical theory that accepts the necessity of a profound change in the last vision of perfect knowledge, to see man and all nature aright, human nature as it is, before it can be touched by the desire for moral and behind to see all spiritual Power and even the lineaments of Deity regeneration or divine grace. Dante's heroes in Purgatory are not being itself--an undertaking that the Middle Ages held to be within human punished for their sins, or even expiating them in any crude sense of the scope--all this might well daunt the imagination of even the stoutest word. They are being transformed, transmuted, from the gross and contemporary poet. In this day when science has begun to doubt the earthly, the state of fallen humanity, into creatures of spirit. And this efficacy of its own instrument, is it not to be wondered at that poetry blessedness is not secured by so simple a means as a mere change of feels its wings to be too weak to follow the bold lead of the medieval heart and repentance: these are only the gateway through which all poet. O voi chi siete in picolletta barca, 'O ye who in your little skiff' must pass, the mere initial act of will that admits to the blessed Mount, venture to follow my ship that sails these unexplored seas--the poet where all progress at first is exceeding hard. Human nature is so warns the lesser poets of the danger of the voyage. And the depraved that at best the labor is long and the burden heavy before final contemporary poets, as all others, have refrained from the undertaking. triumph and peace can be attained. It is a college of intellectual and moral training; not only the will but also the reason must be fortified by So, though Eliot catches a glimpse now here, now there, of the instruction and insight. Here is progress, not by trial and error, but by glory of a redeemed human nature, that final glory(278)when all formal discipline in the tradition of the intellectual and moral church of knowledge shall be within its grasp and human nature made perfect, Christendom, and the end is an adequate philosophy of life and the there is too much doubt in the modern mind, quite apart from modern blessed vision. The simplest axioms and postulates of Christianity science, to allow any poet who would be deemed sane to set the sail of come first, with the gleam of morning light and the visitation of his little skiff for such a voyage into the Empyrean. No, Eliot has not philosopher and angel. These awaken hope and faith and the stimulus caught all the faith and hence failed to see to its final vision his Divine to ascend. From then on, though the way is exceedingly(277)hard, each Comedy that is the allegory of human nature. So there is no Heaven in step brings new knowledge, and new insight, and new ease. The end of Eliot's poetry; he sees the triumph of the church, and by its agency the the purgatorial discipline is the cleansing in Lethe and Eunoe, where discipline of human nature, but of what nature shall be the fruits of this memory is made right, and one can have the full vision of the history triumph, here he remains discreetly silent. and significance of the church as God's instrument for human welfare. All this thought is latent or expressed in Eliot poem Ash- Wednesday. It His description of the purgatorial sufferings and discipline of runs, too, like a poetic comment through the scenes of Murder in the the contemporary Christian world is nowhere better done than in his Cathedral; it is recaptured in his three latest war poems, East Coker, last three poems, a sequence from East Coker to The Dry Salvages. The last poem gives in Christian form the advice that, in the Sanscrit

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Bhagavat-Gītā, the god Krishna gave to the royal warrior Arjuna. It is Probably because of this lack of great and ultimate faith in the old doctrine of the right meaning of personality and action and human nature and the divine plan Eliot, like all contemporaries, is at his humility: best in the Hell of his poetry. To paint human weakness and depravity, the futility of human nature, has become and still is the chief 'On whatever sphere of being preoccupation of all contemporary literature, until the habit has become The mind of a man may be intent an easy obsession. The faith that made the great writers of the past, the At the time of death'--that is the one action faith in the excellence of human nature, that could see its glory even in (And the time of death is every moment) bleak tragedy, has been denied to our generation. So we have had no Which shall fructify in the lives of others: Homer or Aeschylus, no Shakespeare or Milton or Dante. And without And do not think of the fruit of action, faith a literature perishes as well as a people. But in its pictures of a Fare forward . . . people perishing, the literature of today has left us nothing in poetry that can surpass in sheer bleakness some of Eliot. These are only hints and guesses, Hints followed by guesses; and the rest It is needless to analyze the movement of The Hollow Men from Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action. the emptiness of the confession: The hint half guessed, the gift not half understood, is Incarnation. We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men, This purgatory does not close with even the vision of the Blessed Mount and the Triumph of the Church. These days of cruelty, to its concluding refrain: lust, and disaster are too bitter and the Triumph of Evil is too near. There is only hope--a bleak hope muttered through gritted teeth, when Here we go round the prickly pear the eyes are seared with horror.(279) At five o'clock in the morning. This is the way the world ends I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Not with a bang but a whimper.(280) Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre, The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed It is a world unfit even for tragedy. Lives are vain, movement is vain, With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness hope is vain. There once was a hope. on darkness, And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama Eyes I dare not meet in dreams. And the bold imposing façade are all being rolled away . . . I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope Beauty is vain. There once was a beauty, but For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith The eyes are not here But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. There are no eyes here Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: In this valley of dying stars. So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

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It is not a poem with a logical structure, for logic is also vain. It is but often quite misleading, as though he had his tongue in his cheek when the meaningless rambling of the imagination of 'hollow men,' whose he wrote them. The original theme is clear enough. The Waste Land is lives are as and of sustenance as 'rats' feet over broken glass in a dry the country. visited by Sir Perceval on his quest, whose king had cellar.' It is not even a Hell that brings the solace of pain, for pain has suffered from a wound, and while the king was ill his land was stricken its compensation. Hollow men lack even the nerves to feel the pain-- into a wilderness. As long as the questing knight failed to ask the right 'head piece filled with straw.' question the land remained a waste. To this theme, which gives the poem its title, is added a second theme, like an exercise in counterpoint, And Gerontion, the little old man, with his idle ruminations--not so from the myth of Adonis, the Assyrian god whose annual death marks good as The Hollow Men. There is always one highest peak in any the death of nature, and whose revival is the reawakening of life. These mountain range. Gerontion is not a poem to quote to oneself when two myths which come from a common source give the poet the casting the lure for sleep: message that contemporary life has been visited by death. But there is also the prophecy that in the fullness of time there will come the voice Tenants of a dry house and 'reverberation of thunder of spring over distant mountains.' Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season. Thus The Waste Land is a promise and anticipation of There is one Hell that Dante saw but made little effort to purgatory--with its discipline and cleansing, which will ultimately describe, the Ante-Hell, the vestibule of the damned, the Hell of the bring healing and fruitfulness to a desert world. This promise, to Eliot, empty ones, people so light that they were unfit for the regions below. is fulfilled in the creed and liturgy of the church. In no contemporary Non ragionam di lor ma guarda e pama. 'Let us not speak of those but work of the imagination, poetry or prose, has the place of the orthodox look and pass.' It is these empty ones, who are the civilization of our and traditional church been so uncompromisingly set forth as in Ash- time and its motives, that are the Hell of Eliot, and where Dante held Wednesday. Healing is in its wings. The very title is significant of the his peace Eliot is eloquent. We are unfit even for vice: importance of its liturgies. Ash Wednesday, the chief festival of the church, the day set apart and consecrated for repentance and penance-- Those who have crossed the necessary disciplines(282)for salvation prescribed by the church With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom and ministered to by its priests. Somewhere Aidous Huxley has said, Remember us--if at all--not as lost half sneeringly, half jestingly, 'for English Catholics sacraments are the Violent souls, but only psychological equivalent of tractors in Russia.' But there is more than a As the hollow men trifle of justice too in the charge. As the Soviet proletarian revolution The stuffed men.(281) plans an economic revolution for human regeneration, whose symbol is the sickle and hammer on its flag, so the Catholic, and not only the He has the same theme in The Waste Land, but because the English Catholic, plans an intellectual and moral revolution, whose poem has a greater logical incoherence and its allusions are more symbol is the moving liturgy of the church. distant, sophisticated, and even wilful, I refrain from an analysis. For here the poet's pet vice--remote allusion even to a line in old English It would be futile here to analyze in detail all the liturgical drama which must be read in its context and then its context carried movements of this sacramental poem. It is modeled on an old medieval into the poem-- makes reading a work of scholarship. And the notes for chant appropriate to the festival, the Miserere or the litany. It suggests a the reader that he afterwards supplied are only remotely helpful and choir and ministering priests and a kneeling congregation chanting in

126 unison, and in the background can be heard the bells summoning a deaf For those who walk in darkness and erring world to the offices of faith. All that is new is the imagery Both in the day time and in the night time and the press of associations that raise the liturgy above the level of the The right time and the right place are not here mass of worshippers and confine the sacrament to only the No place of grace for those who avoid the face intellectually qualified and elect--the aristocracy of the excellently No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny endowed. the voice.

There are six divisions in this antiphonal poem, and they It closes with the consecration, the high water mark of Eliot's religious correspond precisely to the movements of the old liturgy. First the poetry. Purgatory is achieved and its reward. confession and renunciation ending with the prayer --'Pray for us sinners now at the hour of our death.' The second lays its unerring Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the , spirit of the finger upon the chief modern sin, what Eliot in After Strange Gods garden, calls our 'excessive individualism,' Pride. So here the world is called Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood upon to lay aside futile and individual desires. The third is the allegory Teach us to care and not to care of the poet's life. But the poet is the symbol also of mankind; so here Teach us to sit still we have the struggle of hope and despair, the illusions that have Even among these rocks, brought their illusive rewards. Each epoch of the poet's life has its own Our peace in His will oriel window from which memory reviews the past.(283) And even among these rocks Sister, mother At the first turning of the second stair And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea, I turned and saw below Suffer me not to be separated The same shape twisted on the banister And let my cry come unto Thee. Under the vapour in the fetid air Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears Dante left the third part and the best of his poems for the ranges The deceitful face of hope and of despair. of experience that follow this blessing.

It is a confused and confusing picture. One more poem yet remains whose significance to our(284)times needs to be explored, Murder in the Cathedral. Here the The fourth movement is the promise of redemption. And this is poet states in no uncertain terms the chief contemporary vice and its followed by the call, from the High Altar. But only the very few are only remedy. In a way, again, it is the same vice against which Dante's fitted to hear. The world is blind and deaf and its reason has led it Saint Peter thundered until all Heaven blazed in wrath, the vice of astray. secularization. The founder of the church and first Father, Peter, hurled his anathema at those who were making the papal throne the seat of an Where shall the word be found, where will the word earthly monarch. Thomas à Becket in this poem dies a martyr to an Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence earthly tyrant who would subordinate the church to the state. But the Not on the sea or on the islands, not moral of both poems is the same, 'Render unto Caesar the things that On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land, are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.' Man's life is

127 twain, with separate values. He who forgets the spiritual life kills half, Strictly speaking, from the contemporary point of view, the and the more significant half, of human nature. It is not alone states like Greek tragic heroes had no character. They are only strong human Russia and Germany, which have subordinated or tried to subordinate motives set in action by the untowardness of the situations in which the church to the state, that Eliot has in mind here, but also every they suddenly find themselves. As such they are a vindication of human human being who, in excessive zeal for the mundane and unspiritual, freedom and a revelation of human nature. In the petty routine of has forgotten the heavenly birthright of man. So the English saint's human life there can be neither freedom nor glory. So Thomas, rising condemnation of those that slay men's souls has a scope quite beyond above the tyranny of the present world, though he becomes its victim, the historical story of the quarrel of an archbishop of Canterbury and is an augury of the unquenchable divine fire in human clay, which the King Henry II in A.D. 1170. most malign of human instruments cannot subdue. Saint Thomas is the fully revealed man. Thomas à Becket was the most famous of all English saints. His shrine in Canterbury Cathedral was long the favorite goal of The story of the plot is as simple as a Greek tragedy. Thomas à pilgrimage, and Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims were a group that could Becket, boon companion then chancellor of Henry II, is given the for centuries have been found on the road. As in the Middle Ages these archepiscopal throne by the king, with the hope that he will be more pilgrims went with crude, perhaps, but yet expressed religious zeal, and pliant to the royal authority in the day when the Pope was asserting his today they go only with the mild worldly curiosity of tourists, so our power over all royal Europe. Instead he discovers himself to be the age has degenerated from the epoch of orthodoxy and seeks 'the holy champion of the church in England, and the quarrel between king and blissful martyr' only to satisfy a bizarre and insatiable mundane itch for Pope now becomes the personal strife between king and archbishop. novel entertainment. Who today for a moment sees in the saint the Thomas flees to France and is absent for seven years, during which symbol of a fight that is eternal against the encroachments of the time the church languishes. He returns and the feud breaks out with secular? fresh violence, until the king in a fit of anger exclaims to his(286)knights, 'Will no one rid me of this pestilent priest?' At once Saint Thomas in this liturgical play is a symbol. But it is not four knights make their way to Canterbury and slay the archbishop wholly a liturgical play; it has for model also the Greek; and one cannot before the High Altar. There is just as little and just as much in this see the full significance of the poem unless(285)it is laid beside the historic episode for the dramatic poet as there was in the old myth of masterpieces of the Greek drama. For as our tradition, the tradition of Agamemnon or Prometheus or Oedipus for the Greek poetic orthodoxy, is Christian, it is also Greek. The Christian church in its imagination. days of vigorous growth drew richly from the spring of ancient Greece. Appropriately then the play is an interesting blend of the old medieval For characters Eliot resorts to the method of the Greeks and the miracle drama or saints' play and the Greek drama with few characters dramatists of the Middle Ages. There is the chorus of the women of and a chorus. But far more important is the debt to the inner structure Canterbury, fearful, bewildered, forlorn, in an age they cannot of the Greek dramatic poem. As the dramatic hero of Aeschylus or understand. They are the you and I of this past century; and their chant Sophocles or even Euripides is a symbol of human nature at a moment of futility at the beginning is the chant of any and all poets who cannot of severe crisis, so the Archbishop Thomas is the symbol of human see beyond the dismal present. nature plucking from defeat the fruits of victory, and asserting its freedom from the tyranny of circumstance. We try to keep our households in order; The merchant, shy and cautious, tries to compile a little fortune,

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And the labourer bends to his piece of earth, earth-colour, his No. For the Church is stronger for this action own colour, Triumphant in adversity. It is fortified Preferring to pass unobserved. By persecution: supreme, so long as men will die for it. Now I fear disturbance of the quiet seasons: Winter shall come bringing death from the sea, But even more, in the transformation of the mood of the chorus Ruinous spring shall beat at our doors, we discover a fulfilment of the true motive of martyrdom. Where Root and shoot shall eat our eyes and our ears, before they had been bewildered and afraid, now they are full of Disastrous summer burn up the beds of our streams confidence and hope. And the poor shall wait for another decaying October. Those who deny Thee could not deny, if Thou didst not exist; There are the priests who welcome their spiritual head, men and their denial is never complete, for if it were so, they would with a mission they do not comprehend, and a faith they do not not exist. practice. They are the equally bewildered clergy of today, doing a routine or ritual that carries no spark of vital motive. They affirm Thee in living; all things affirm Thee in living; the bird in the air, both the hawk and the finch; the beast on the Thomas knows that the time of his great choice is at hand. Shall earth, both the wolf and the lamb; the worm in the soil and the he succumb to the temptation of living at peace or risk the wrath of the worm in the belly. king and the glory of martyrdom? So there are four allegorical tempters who whisper in the archbishop's ear. First, the lure of pleasure and ease, Therefore man, whom Thou hast made to be conscious of Thee, his early life of poetry and dalliance. Second, the robust temptation of must consciously praise Thee, in thought and in word and in worldly power: co-operate with the king, become again the(287)lord deed. chancellor, and all England is his. The third is the more subtle: risk the employment of worldly weapons against the worldly weapons of the And the play closes with a paean of thanksgiving. king. There are those who will gladly lend their aid to pluck from the king his new royal prerogative. To all these temptations the hero is We thank Thee for Thy mercies of blood, for Thy redemption deaf. But there comes the fourth, a more subtle tempter, out of the by blood. For the blood of Thy martyrs and saintsShall enrich conscience itself of its victim. Seek the glory of martyrdom, and the earth, shall create the holy places.(288) become for all time the saint at whose shrine all posterity will offer adoration: the Sin of Pride. What is the meaning today of this antique story? Already I believe its first significance has been made clear: the need of resolutely The saint meets this last in a sermon, in prose, on the meaning distinguishing between the things that are of Caesar and those that are of martyrdom, is assaulted by the knights, and meets death calmly of God. This is its obvious moral, and obvious for all. But as in Dante's before the altar. Now comes the transformation that is the heart of the poem there is allegory buried under allegory, so here is there a yet play. Immediately the priests, who before had worked at they knew not deeper meaning and a liturgical. The sacrament of atonement, the what, see clearly and acknowledge their calling. necessity of martyrdom, not the atonement of Christ made for all, but a daily need of atonement that those in whose sake it was made may be saved. The mystery of vicarious suffering that a world may be

129 redeemed, the central doctrine of orthodox Christianity, which the their implied intolerance. As to the Angelic Doctor of the Middle Ages contemporary world with its secular and humanitarian religions seems and to its supreme poet the answer was once given, so to the new completely to have forgotten, all this is urged in the undertones of the Catholics it is again the same answer, changed only to suit new play, else the song of thanksgiving, like the glad chant of Easter, is conditions. The result is confidence and peace. quite without meaning.* Is a similar sacrifice needed today, and the discovery of a new martyrdom and a new saint, that the world may find a new peace?† NOTE IN CONCLUSION

But there is yet more. Human nature is yet the human nature of the long I have purposely left out of view Eliot latest play: A Family Reunion. It tradition of human excellence, which was always an active search for is an interesting effort to combine the Greek with the naturalistic peace and freedom. And these two terms are almost synonymous. One tradition, and give to the whole a Christian moral of sin, guilt, cannot be had without the other. Those that seek peace through mere confession, and atonement. To make the mixture a bit more confusing compliance with things as they are find only bondage and death. The he adds the motive of hallucination. I cannot feel that the various resolute human nature that dares death and tyranny to assert its own ingredients adhere or that the result is happy. Does the play mean that moral worth and freedom--this must never be lost, for without it not the sins of the fathers are ghosts that come to life in the next only the individual but also the race perishes. Eliot, though the poet of generation? Will confession and atonement lay the Eumenides, the Catholic orthodoxy, is also the poet of the larger human tradition. torturing Furies, that are the fruits of wrong doing? And will this atonement by one member give the whole empty family a new motive 'Theocentric humanism': the phrase is Maritain's, as against for life? Vicarious suffering and the need of a perpetual atonement, are 'anthropomorphic humanism' that has been the heretical drift of the these the central theme of the play?(290) tradition in Europe since the day of THE PROMISE AND BLESSING XIV ______* THOMAS MANN It is curious that this central motive of Christian dogma is almost absent from Dante Divine Comedy. Why? 'Not in vain, so he heard from the newly beheld God, shall have been † thy torment and thine unrest; for it shall fructify many soils.'

In a recent book Maritain cites the rape of Czechoslovakia as a JOSEPH AND HIS BROTRERS martyrdom from which all Europe will profit.(289) 'There would come a day, the latest and the last, which alone would Montaigne. A self-sufficient man is a bewildered and forlorn man, with bring about the fulfillment of God.' no answer to the most perplexing and most insistent of all questions, his nature and destiny. To his intellect, unaided by inspiration from YOUNG JOSEPH above, these questions remain forever unanswerable and because unanswerable the subject of innumerable and conflicting philosophies, 'That was no base ambition: to live in the light of the silent conviction like guesses in the dark. Hence the assurance of the new Catholics and that God had unique designs regarding him. Ambition is not the right

130 word for it; for it was Ambition for God, and that deserves a higher and the constitution of Rome. Thomas Mann, as he turns to a much name.' earlier episode in the history of humanity in the prose epic of the Hebrew conscience and its beginning, finds it full of significance for JOSEPH IN EGYPT the bewildered and anxious contemporary mind.

'NOT IN vain'--there is more than a slight analogy between the self- There is yet more in the analogy of Abraham and Thomas imposed exile of Thomas Mann from his native Germany, now Mann. It was this arch-ancestor's great discovery that the charm and the sacrificing in high places to strange gods, and the flight of the ancient sweetness in the lands of Ur and Egypt were the allure of death and forefather of his hero Joseph from the heathen Ur of the Chaldees. For annihilation. It was to discover life that he resisted its sensuous appeal. early Abraham had learned that 'one must serve the Highest alone,' and Such, too, was to be the experience of his descendants Jacob and the gods of Ur were powers lesser and sinister, and ministers of death. Joseph. And as one reads from the beginning the long series of novels So he became an exile, a man apart, the founder of a new tradition. and essays of Thomas Mann, with their themes from the beginning of Likewise his descendants, Jacob and his son Joseph, in their lonely our century to these days of tragedy, they tell the story of this our adversity found comfort in the fulfilment of a divine plan: 'Not in vain western civilization rounding to its period of death. There was a time, shall have been thy torment.' For it led to the discovery of something when he wrote The Magic Mountain and(292)Death in Venice, that it that is ultimate, 'the nature of man,' and in this there is bound up also seemed he was writing the obituary of Europe, the gradual sickening of another blessing: by discovering the nature of man Abraham will and reason, when men play with shadows in a world of shadows, discovered also peace. Thomas Mann is devoted to the same quest. and succumb to the fatal sweetness and charm of the mortal malady in Peace, how can it be sought in a world given up to vain strivings and the empire of the tomb. Later, when the crisis was even more alarming worship of the brute, strange abortions of the imagination, without pity and the clamor of Cerberus beyond endurance, he wrote the hope of a or reason,(291)grotesque monsters and symbols of dark power? rebirth. For his hero he sought in the well of time for the man that made Abraham left the ease of the fruitful plains to save his integrity and the great discovery of God and man and the consciousness of human keep alive his faith, and moved, a questing spirit, upon the uplands and destiny. An age that has lost God and in consequence belittled man arid hills of a new world, that in their stillness he might hear the voice needs the discovery. of his newly found God. The analogy is not only a personal one for Thomas Mann the exile from Nazi Germany. It is the paradox of every In this Europe and America that may be on the point of setting sensitive soul of today, who in the contemporary din can hear only the up the tradition of the state or the church as the Absolute, his return to alarmed and menacing cries of the beast; where in this clamor of the individual human conscience is not unlike Luther's defiance of unhuman tongues can he find the solitude in which man can discover Pope and Oecumenical Council and proclamation of the virtue and reason and the will of God and peace? necessity of non-conformity. In more ways than one Thomas Mann is in the orthodox Protestant tradition. Life has a meaning, human destiny It is interesting to observe how an old epic narrative can serve a is a pattern woven by the combined efforts of man and God. Man must contemporary purpose and give meaning and direction to life. To the be admitted to 'the secrets that lie behind man and things.' These are not Greek Homer was more than an old story of a people's mythical and written in constitutions of states or revealed to deliberative councils, divine beginnings; his poem was a textbook in contemporary conduct nor can they be expressed in the dogmas of any church. They are and laid the foundation of classical civilization and art. Virgil in the life discovered only by such as Abraham and his successors, who while story of the devoted Aeneas saw the pattern of the Roman Augustus they live in the world are yet apart. 'Yea, often it hath seemed to me as

131 though the world is full of such loud rumors to the end that it may which he will recur as one of the dominant motives of all his later better hide the hidden beneath them and out-talk the secrets that lie thinking. It later became the central theme in the two interesting short behind men and things.' novels, Tonio Kroeger and Death in Venice. The answer in these had so stout a conviction, that it was almost possible to say of the author that But before one can hear the call to come out and be separate, he was obsessed with the beauty of disease and death. one must have known in one's own life the fatal sweetness that is the foretaste of death. So before there could be the Thomas Mann of the But all of these, the Buddenbrooks, the two little Joseph and his Brothers there was the younger Mann, a generation ago, novels,(294)are minor items in the development of Thomas Mann's of the Buddenbrooks, then after the war, of Death in Venice, of Tonio genius. They point the way to his major enterprise, the epic of the Kroeger, and last, but greatest, of the Zauberberg, The Magic Europe before the war, The Magic Mountain. I expect in a generation Mountaintain.(293)Great as are these books, and especially the last, or two, when the books of the first third of the twentieth century are they are all like Part I of Goethe Faust, the preparation, the necessary balanced and audited, that this novel will be among the very near first, training, the vision of Vanity Fair, that later the pilgrim of life might be in the final assessment of the creative imagination of our time. Yet the led to the region of the final vision and reality. novel differs from every other great novel of the nineteenth century. For its closest analogy we shall have to go back to the beginnings and Buddenbrooks belongs to the pre-war generation; and its theme call up the spirit of Cervantes and his Don Quixote. For though both is not unlike that of the family novel, where the laws of heredity and abound in realistic description and background that all can confirm, environment work the regeneration, but far more often the both are founded upon a fantasy. Each in its way is a vision and each an disintegration, of a family. It reminds one not a little of Zola, if one allegory. Perhaps, and this is no vain conjecture, this very quality is the removes the Zolaesque obsession with the unfortunate flotsam and hall mark of their greatness. jetsam of contemporary civilization. Much more is it like the chronicle of the Forsyte family by Galsworthy. And yet in it there is something But nowhere is the contrast between the spacious, humane days more, a distrust of some of the most admired motives of life, and of the Renaissance and ours more manifest than in the attitude of especially of art and music; but not precisely as the philistine distrusts Cervantes, which while it could laugh could also chide and hope for culture, as one of the unpractical ornaments of life that distract from the human betterment through discipline and insight. The case of the Don business of making a living and founding a family fortune. Thomas was not hopeless. His excesses were due to wrong-headedness and Mann in his own family had seen an honest, well-to-do manufacturing folly, natural but eradicable human frailties. And at his side there was family lose itself in a later generation in the impractical pursuit of art always the pedestrian Sancho, who, though he could not aspire, at least and culture. He has a deeper motive for distrust. recognized the difference between windmills and terrormongering giants. The world was at heart sound and wholesome, as sound and In this novel he tells the story of the slow paralysis of the will to wholesome as the highways and sun and clear air of Spain. The world live and create by the creeping nihilism of prettiness. And there rises was much more nearly right than the Don in his folly deemed; its naturally in the mind of the reader, as in the then yet immature ailment was rather of the head than of the heart; only he was the last imagination of the author, the active doubt: are art and music, are these man in the world qualified for the adventure of setting it right. obsessions with what is called Beauty, wholesome? Are they not rather a sign of decay and even of approaching death? Here almost in his But the comedy of the Zauberberg is bitter and unqualified. Its youth the author, in the decade before the war, posed a question to background is not a real world at all, but a place of unrealities, spectra

132 of people, and phantasms for ideas, and no motives strong enough more to begin his career as a marine engineer, has a few days of leisure and than to utter their impotence. It is a place as empty as the imagination runs up to the mountain to visit his cousin Joachim, an officer of that creates it, and, except for its gloss on the condition of the world, artillery, who has contracted the disease and is impatiently submitting as(295)purposeless. The characters are driven not by folly but by to an enforced furlough. The story begins as casually and innocently as mortal illness, and though they move and talk as men and women, they any realistic or naturalistic novel; and it is not until one has been are shadows of humanity, humanity in dissolution, yet able to simulate captivated by its alluring subtlety that one begins to realize that behind thought and action; they are the puppets of their malady. Don Quixote all this easy charm there is a deadly serious purpose; and that one is was rescued from his folly and his eyes opened by a jolt from his horse. being read a moral and alarming lesson. It required the shock of a world war to scatter these shadows of the Magic Mountain. For Hans Castorp is by no means only the well-meaning but more-or-less-purposeless young German engineer. He is Everyman, the To make another comparison, The Magic Mountain may also be Everyman of pre-war Europe. Cultured and efficiently trained, loving compared with Goethe Faust. And this comparison is doubly art and music, cosmopolitan in his background, and at the same time a appropriate, for Mann is more than an admirer of the aristocrat of the competent technological expert, he has in him all of the potential German tradition of excellence. The Magic Mountain is Goethe Faust motives of the age that could talk of music and pictures and operate in reverse. For as the theme of the great dramatic poem is the gradual modern machinery. There is only one thing lacking. His actions are regeneration of man through the wise use of experience, the theme of nearly all of them purely automatic. He is sensitive, none too the novel is the allegory of human disintegration through the intelligent, but beautifully curious about everything, including the latest simulacrum of experience, until will becomes atrophied and reality is researches in science. He is Everyman. 'Du bist nicht irgend ein lost in a Walpurgis Night of kaleidoscopic illusion. In the former, time Mensch, mit einem Namen . . . du bist ein Vertreter.' You are not a and causation are real, because both are directed and measured by an person with a name--you are a type. active will; here all sense of time disappears and human endeavor is directed only to its annihilation. The one is occupied with life and how The Magic Mountain itself is not a place on any map of it may be lived more abundantly, in spite of the cynical temptation of Switzerland, or anywhere else. It is Europe. It is a place of disease and Mephistopheles whose reward is death; the other slowly submits to the imminent death, as Europe is a hospital whose vocation is disease and luxury of death. So far has the spirit of optimism at the beginning of the death. The motives of all the patients are vain, infertile, the ceaseless nineteenth century been transmuted into its opposite in the narrow talk of Vanity Fair, Maya, the world of illusion, that expends its time in compass of a hundred years. Such is the sentence one of its keenest vapid exploitation of all motives, none of which are carried into action, critics passes upon the Europe of the days before the Great War. endless talk on endless subjects, but no accomplishment except death, that silently and without notice lurks behind all the idle philanderings For the Magic Mountain is Europe. In the story it is a cure in and purposeless chatter. For compensation there are the aimless gaiety, Switzerland and its patients the miscellaneous victims of tuberculosis parties, dances, masquerades, (297)even lectures on science that the from everywhere in Europe; and as we get acquainted with them an intellects of the inmates might not be neglected, and music and art, amazingly cultured and proper selection from all the proper walks of above all music and art. These are not pursued as professions or as life. It is a microcosm of Europe. Curiously, and yet for a good reason, creative activities, but only as distractions, to keep people from only the(296) workers and the peasants are not represented. The hero, thinking on life and death, to make them forget time and themselves. Hans Castorp, freshly graduated from an engineering school and ready The Magic Mountain is a pseudo-world, a world designed as an escape

133 from the world, a place of refuge for those who would play only with lui qui fait la mort, oui, ils sont charnels tous deux, l'amour et abstractions and substitutes. la mort, et voila leur terreur et leur grande magie!

For Thomas Mann is convinced that art and music, when they Clavidia closes the scene with the only remark that the place serve only as distractions from life, a cultured form of idleness and a and time could find fitting--'Adieu, mon prince Carnaval! Vous aurez relief only to the emotions when these have no consort with reality, are une mauvaise ligne de fièvre ce soir, je vous le predis.' the way of death, and not of life. This is the main theme of the Death in Venice, the story of the gradual disintegration of what once may have In this region where life pauses and awaits annihilation there is been a very real artist. More than once he returns to the same theme in also the annihilation of Time. this novel. Hans Castorp easily finds his place in such a world of shadows. How long Joachim had lived here with his cousin, up to the time of his fateful departure, or taken all in all; what had been the date All are preoccupied with the prince of shadows, Death. For of his going, how long he had been gone, when he had come back; how there is no other preoccupation that is more sensuously thrilling. A long Hans Castorp himself had been up here when his cousin returned sound body with a sound imagination is only occasionally alert to the and then bade time farewell; how long--dismissing Joachim from our sensuous call of life. Its concern is with matters beyond itself, the world calculations--Frau Chauchat had been absent; how long, since what in which it plays its part is far more interesting and absorbing than the date, she had been back again (for she did come back); how much telegraphic record of peripheral nerves. To the ill, cut off from most of mortal time Hans Castorp himself had spent in House Berghof by the the activities of life, little is left except the luxury of an abandonment to time she returned; no one asked him all these questions, and he sense. Here on the Magic Mountain, as the young hero at once probably shrank from asking himself. If they had been put him, he discovers, all creative activity has ceased, and the campaign with death would have tapped his forehead with the tips of his fingers, and most has become each inmate's personal adventure, symbolized by the fever certainly not have known--a phenomenon as disquieting as his chart each displays as the chief objet d'art over his bed. Hans Castorp incapacity to answer Herr Settembrini, that long-ago first evening, too begins early to keep the curve of his fever, and study the X-ray when the latter had asked him his age. photos of his lungs, with its light and dark areas like the surface of the moon. Now there are two ways of rising above time, a positive and a negative, and of escaping its bondage. For time, to those who would Even when he falls in love--for there is also the shadow of love throw off its chains, is the routine of the commonplace, the table of in this world of shadows--the photograph that he(298) begs from conventional necessities that binds man to the wheel and destroys Clavidia is not one a living lover would carry, but the X-ray picture of freedom. The Buddhist seeks its annihilation by rising above the desire her thorax, that he may immortalize her illness. And on the evening of for individual existence, by slowly throttling all selfish motive, and a masquerade there is a conclusion of a liturgy in love making without thus discovering(299) by the discipline of Yoga that the world of self is parallel-- the world also of illusion. Time is only the last illusion and most persistent. He thus attains the great victory whose end is the bliss of Oh, l'amour, tu sais-- Le corps, l'amour, la mort, ces trois ne Nirvana. We have seen how this philosophy that denies the reality of font qu'un. Car le corps, c'est la maladie et la volupté, et c'est the world of sense has colored and given substance to the poetry of the Indian Tagore. There is a caricature of this philosophy in the effort of

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Proust to gain immortality for the moment by fusing in recaptured of life in the motives of the soldier? He at least had the virtue of his memory the sentient past. For these moments are timeless in that they profession, and the world of illusion about him was a continuous and are unselfish, freed from the bondage of the present and immediate irrelevant bondage. The generous and chivalric soldier--but he too, individual desire. Proust literally was searching by the discipline of a though he saw through it all, had the disease. For war is no longer the new Yoga for a sort of psychological Nirvana, and its compensating profession of the chivalric and generous; so he dies before his cousin joy. Hans Castorp's sojourn is complete.

But the patients of the Berghof had neither the opportunity nor There is the charming and lovable Settembrini--the name is the motive for any such discipline. The oriental mystic is convinced allegorical--the symbol of the decay of enlightened liberalism with its that behind the illusion of time lies the only significant reality, the appeal to the best in human nature. He is cynical but not bitter. He is eternal, and he would live free of all illusion. For the comrades of the rhetorical as liberalism has always been, from Voltaire to John Bright cure there is only one reality, the negative one of Death. It too, like to Woodrow Wilson. But this is liberalism now in its disintegration, eternity, is timeless, and in the cult of the dance of Death all are joined, more voluble than ever, and more humane and more lovable, but loosed the serious and the gay, the intellectual and the purely sensuous. In now from all power of action. He can cite the victories of the past, and their world of fleeting illusions there is also a victory over Time. But the hopes for human regeneration, and deal bitterly with all that time is not swallowed up in Eternity, it is annihilated in Death. It is an oppose, and especially with the most dangerous foe of all liberalism, illuminating sojourn this. So a visit begun as a careless gesture the Jesuit Jew advocate of the totalitarian state and force, Naphta. becomes a pilgrim's progress toward timelessness and Death. The fact that Mann here in his symbolism is using a well-known psychological Herr Naphta is a person of most unusual mental powers. He is reaction of most tubercular victims towards time only adds to its force. by nature discursive, and so am I. Condemn me if you will--I avail myself of the opportunity to cross swords with an antagonist who is It is an interesting group of characters that Hans Castorp is after all my equal. I have no one else--anywhere.-- In short, it is true introduced to on this mountain of illusions, characters who are wraiths that I visit him and he me, we take walks together. We dispute. We of ideas and not real personalities, for they have been denied the power quarrel, nearly every day, till we draw(301)blood; but I confess the of action. Rather they seem fixed attitudes; idées fixes, that have all the contrariness and mischievousness of his ideas but render our convincingness of live and mobile ideas, except that of carrying acquaintance the more attractive. I need the friction. Opinions cannot themselves into action. As we pass them in review are they not a survive if one has no chance to fight for them--and I am only confirmed generous(300) handful of the ghosts that haunted the voluble corridors in mine. of the pre-war decade? For as they are impotent for creative action they cultivate the gardens of speech and persuasion--all except one. But the blood that Settembrini draws is only the blood of ghosts. He is Joachim the soldier, grimly taciturn and impatient, impatient to go below to the world of action and his profession of war. Herr Naphta, by the very combination of opposites in his blood He is the only character with a positive motive, who counted the days and training, is a force, but only a stage villain engaged in a and refused to be compensated by any world of shadows. Does Thomas masquerade of danger. His real power will not be given him until the Mann, seeing the preparations that the pre-war nations of Europe, and war has driven Europe out of the mountain of illusion and closed its especially Germany, were making for war, find the only positive signs gates. A great deal of very recent history is locked up in this personage,

135 who yet is as much a ghost as his opponent in these verbal duels. The hand from the shedding of blood. Its task is to strike terror into the intensity and moral conviction of the Jew, the training and discipline world for the healing of the world, that man may finally achieve and will to obedience of the Jesuit, the conviction that institutions are salvation and deliverance, and win back at length to freedom from law greater than the individual, and above all the moral creed that the end and from distinction of classes, to his original status as child of God. will justify every, even the most bloody, means; it isn't hard to classify Herr Naphta. Of all its patients he seems the most out of place in this There is Clavidia Chauchat whose unconventional photograph Eden of the lifeless. But what motive in those care-free years before the Hans Castorp carries and to whom he makes feverish love. If Naphta war seemed potent for evil? It was the age of perfect tolerance, when and Settembrini bring Castorp under cascades of ideas enough to tolerance meant perfect indifference. But here is Herr Naphta--we think bewilder and confound, Clavidia is an unpredictable geyser of a little differently of him today. He is telling the story of Communism. sensations and emotions. She is as spontaneous and unpredictable in her comings and goings. She is the breaker up of smug order, she never Indeed, these humane spirits were revolted by the idea of the automatic fails to slam doors as she enters or leaves the otherwise peaceful and increase of money; they regarded as usury every kind of interest-taking orderly dining room. But she is no less disorderly in her views. Here is and speculation, and declared that every rich man was either a thief or her definition of morals in those closing days of nineteenth-century the heir of a thief. They went further. Like Thomas Aquinas, they propriety: considered trade, pure and simple, buying and selling for profit, without altering or improving the product, a contemptible occupation. La morale? Cela t'intéresse? Eh bien, il nous semble, qu'il They were not inclined to place a very high value on labour in and for faudrait chercher la morale non dans la vertu, c'est-a-dire dans itself, as being an ethical, not a religious concern, and performed not in la raison, la discipline, les bonnes mœurs, l'honnêteté, mais the service of God, but as a part of the business of living. This being plutôt dans le contraire, je veux dire dans le péché, en the case, they demanded that the measure of profit or of public esteem s'abandonnant au danger, ὰ ce qui est nuisible, ὰ ce qui nous should be in proportion to the actual labour expended, and accordingly consume. Il nous semble qu'il est plus moral de se perdre et it was not the tradesman or the industrialist,(302)but the labourer and même de se laisser dépérir, que de se conserver. Les grands the tiller of the soil, who were honourable in their eyes. For they were moralistes n'étai(303)ent point de vertueux, mais des in favour of making production dependent upon necessity, and held aventuriers dans le mal, des vicieux, des grands pécheurs qui mass production in abhorrence. Now, then: after centuries of disfavour nous enseignent ὰ nous incliner chrétiennement devant la these principles and standards are being resurrected by the modern misère. Tout ça doit te déplaire beaucoup, n'est-ce pas? movement of communism. The similarity is complete, even to the claim for world-domination made by international labour as against Close relative of André Gide, is she not? Clavidia is an international industry and finance; the world-proletariat, the politico- interesting person, the new eternal feminine. But again how unlike economic means of salvation demanded by our age, does not mean Goethe ewig weiblich, who brings order and peace and direction into domination for its own sake and in perpetuity; but rather in the sense of the miscellaneous life of Faust. Instead she is the angel of a chaos of a temporary abrogation, in the Sign of the Cross, of the contradiction impotent ideas and impotent passion. between spirit and force; in the sense of overcoming the world by mastering it; in a transcendental, a transitional sense, in the sense of the In all this Hans Castorp becomes a genius in absorbing Kingdom. The proletariat has taken up the task of Gregory the Great, experience that leads nowhere. Nor does he even learn whether his his religious zeal burns within it, and as little as he, may it withhold its illness is real or imaginary, so well does he fall into the life of diseased

136 futility. He offers himself to these pseudo-adventures with the full the Highest alone. Remarkable indeed.For the answer revealed a self- knowledge that their only effect will be on that all important fever line. assertiveness which might be called excessive and arrogant. The man In this 'epic of disease' he even learns to find disease interesting; might have said to himself: 'What am I and of what avail, or the human perhaps it reveals more of the spiritual nature of man than health. being in me, what mattereth it which little god or idol or minor deity I Perhaps, even, it is a part of the order of nature, and is eine Form der serve?' He would have had an easier time. But instead he said: 'I, Leidenlichkeit; one of the forms the life of passion ordains. Perhaps Abram, and humanity within me, must serve the Highest and nought characters are even ennobled by it, and in its exquisiteness it is to be else.' And that was the beginning of it all (as it pleased Joseph to hear). preferred to gross health. Perhaps love itself is a disease, in its richest ecstasy available only to those that have the mark of the malady. 'C'est . . . Thus out of impulse toward the Highest had Abraham de mon ancien amour pour toi; que ces marques me restent qui discovered God; had by teaching and by taking thought shaped Behrens a trouvés dans mon corps, et qui indiquent que jadis aussi Him further and bodied Him forth and therewith done a great j'étais malade.' Faust makes the grand adventure to discover Helena good deed to all concerned: to God, to himself, and to those that he may be made whole, but Hans Castorp-- whose souls he won by his teaching.

The Great War was the thunderbolt that broke up the adventure Though the title turns the spotlight only on Joseph the story is in diseased futility. As we last see Hans Castorp-- millions of Hans the epic of four generations, the Biblical prose epic of Abraham, Isaac, Castorps--'feet heavy with mould, the bayonet swinging in his hand,' Jacob and Joseph, the founders of the tradition of a chosen people, and 'farewell, honest Hans Castorp, farewell . . . Out of this universal feast the reason and manner of their choice. But Thomas Mann is of too of death, out of this extremity of fever, kindling the rain-washed catholic a nature to suggest that it is of the nature of the Hebrew evening sky to a fiery glow, may it be that Love one day shall mount?' tradition that he is speaking; much rather it is of the tradition of War was one way out of the mount of illusions; it was a reality bitter humanity. Abraham and his descendants are the allegory of humanity and malignant and only temporary. Can there be a(304)better hope for in general in the process of an evolution from savagery, and(305)the the civilization of Europe? And that answer Thomas Mann is now end of the process is only remotely suggested, 'the fulfilment of God.' engaged in unfolding in his story of Joseph and his Brothers. For each in his way had the vision, the vision of the place of Man in a divine plan, and the ardent need of co-operation with God that the will For the theme of this yet uncompleted novel I think the words of God may be made to prevail. Each had the ambition, 'that was no of the author are the most pertinent. The old servant Eliezer had been base ambition: to live in the light of the silent conviction that God had speaking: he had been--or one like him-- the companion of the unique designs regarding him. Ambition is not the right word for it; for patriarch Abraham. He is now the companion, guide, and instructor of it was ambition for God, and that deserves a higher name.' the young Joseph. Vision--the word has long had a sinister meaning, as one thinks That made an impression on Joseph; he grasped it at once, of the ecstasies of medieval ascetics and now knows some of the particularly the part about taking things seriously. For in order to give psychological motives that have given them birth. There often is more any sort of importance or significance to things--or any one thing--one of the psychopathic than spiritual in the orgiastic excesses of a had to, before God and man, take them seriously. Forefather had vagabond imagination. But there is vision of a quite different variety, beyond a doubt taken seriously the question as to whom man should without which one shudders at what level human life would be left serve; and had given it a remarkable answer, to wit: one should serve stranded. Even science and the scientific mind are not without a debt to

137 those who had visions regarding the meaning of things and their Exactly of the same worth was the vision of the meaning of life relationship. The commonplace pedestrian mind is content with things that came to forefather Abraham. It came with the convincingness of a as they have been presented, not looking behind and around for pattern motive that polarized personality and freed it for action. It made him or significance beyond the bare needs of everyday life. But a moment suddenly feel the abyss that separated him from his neighbors, who of thought and quickly the inquiring mind feels the queerness of the continued to accept the currency of the age and life at face value. universe, large or small, in which it tries to discover a meaning. The Abraham escaped from the Magic Mountain of illusion and death. scientist G. B. S. Haldane is reported to have said of it, 'The universe is From this day forth he became the ancestor of all who demand reality not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.' It of life and a personal, vital motive for living. Abraham was different. is only vision that can discover a clue to the manner of its queerness, and how to read its meaning. As Goethe Faust was an epic of humanity, so will this sequence of novels, when it is complete, be an epic. But there is a difference, not Vision accepts life not at its face value. And from this point of only in its philosophy, but also in the background of its science. Goethe view there is no essential difference between the vision of the scientist, Faust carried an optimistic (307)faith in human nature, in that morning that of the poet, and that of Abraham and every mystic that challenges of science, that could remove mountains. The compact with the accepted values. The only check is the practical one after the event, Mephistopheles was unfair to the spirit of evil, who himself is of whether it can be made to work; by their fruits do we know them, the perplexed by his impotence. He confesses himself baffled, the spirit visions of scientist, poet, and mystic. So Sir Isaac Newton,(306)from that 'ever wills the bad, but works the good.' Faust was never in danger the simple facts known from the beginnings of time, came upon the law of damnation. In our day, on the contrary, we are troubled by the of moving bodies. His imagination leaped the gap from experience to a dubious fate of man, and damnation has again a very real, though no formula that transcends experience and measures the stars. So Einstein longer a theological, significance. And a wager with the spirit of evil corrected Newton, supplying something that in his day was beyond the today is no jesting matter. As if we slipped a coin into some cosmic slot earlier philosopher's scope. So has come every great discovery in machine, the law of averages seems against us. The saga of Joseph is science through the freed and heightened consciousness, the more serious than the drama of Faust. imagination or vision, that insisted on seeing beyond the face value of things, into the invisible. It casts also a much wider net. Time-- Goethe remarked once that at his death Faust was a hundred years old. But the story of these It is this same 'imaginative enfranchisement accompanied by a four generations is unfathomable in the well of time. They are four greater degree than ever before of comprehension' that is the gift of generations; they are also four epochs in the evolution and discipline of great poetry. Homer, before the beginnings of human history, read the humanity. They are the discoveries that man has made as the tradition story of a world of gods and men and made it intelligible to human of humanity took form and grew and became a mighty power. reason. Intelligibility of the world in which we live, the postulate that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph are here each in his own person, and man's reason can comprehend and thus at least partly control the world each in his own age; but again their times are first obscure and distant, in which it works, without this postulate all life becomes the victim of a then clearer and close to ours. It was always also a personal discovery, benevolent or mischievous caprice. Once open the door to caprice, and in spite of the tradition; and the blessing each possessed involved only science is impossible. It was the poet's vision that made science the power each gained to act; the vision had to be repeated and passed possible. More than once in the history of human progress the poet has with its blessing to the coming epoch. Above all, each must act in the pointed the way that science has followed. faith and light the vision conferred.

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A long tradition and a growing one of man's conflict with his inward fact; but it was also the origin of the peculiar character chief enemy. The enemy was always Death, stagnation, disbelief in the of Abram's fear of God. living essence of humanity and its divine coadjutor. To Abraham, back in the primitive days of human nature, the enemy was symbolized by A double discovery. There is an upper world, the world of the story of Nimrod, savagery. Isaac, of a later epoch, found his enemy spirit, and a nether world, the world of matter. Man shares of the in Ishmael, the code of the restless nomad. Jacob, of a day not far natures of both, but forgets the upper, and can become wholly absorbed removed from the modern, had two enemies, one of temperament and in the nether world, the abode of matter and death. The upper world, one of a code for life. He had his twin brother(308)rival, Esau, the spirit the nether world, and the story of the evolution of history is by Mann of romantic excess and uncertain temper and lack of discipline, symbolized by the cults of the dying god in the regions about passionate and unpredictable. The other foe was his relative Laban, a Palestine(309)from whose sensuous appeal the earlier patriarchs must man of commerce, given up to the pursuit of wealth and industry for its hold themselves aloof. It was symbolized in Egypt by the aesthetic own sake. Jacob must learn to deal righteously and yet firmly with cults of animals and birds, the creatures of the appetites, and by the both, and live apart. Joseph, the contemporary, finds the effete and feasts and art dedicated to the dead. Each had its cults of fertility and its dead culture and refinement of Egypt, with its art and beauty and obsession with sex, but fertility is only matter perpetuating itself, and sensuousness and obscenity, the most insidious and difficult foe of sex an aesthetic obsession with sensual appetite. Thus each serves only them all. Joseph must live in Egypt, the land of the cult of Death, and the lower life. They are not life dedicated to an end beyond itself, but yet find life and not falter in pursuit of the blessing. life obsessed with its own processes in the prospect of death, like the obsession of the patients on the Magic Mountain with their own fever And the vision is the discovery of man, and in that discovery charts. There was beauty, but in these paganisms that the four also the discovery of God. generations lived to conquer, it too is dedicated to itself and death. There is exquisite taste, but it is meaningless. These are symbolized in I taste of death and knowledge when, as story-teller, I adventure the Joseph in Egypt by the attractive figure of Potiphar, lovable but into the past; hence my eagerness, hence my fear and pallor. But impotent, whose highest ambition was realized when he was allowed to eagerness has the upper hand, and I do not deny that it is of the flesh, call himself the unique friend of Pharaoh. He was a eunuch. for its theme is the first and last of all our questioning and speaking and all our necessity; the nature of man. That it is which we shall seek out Abraham, the founder of the new tradition, learned one more in the underworld and death, as Ishtar there sought Tammuz and Isis truth, and a perilous one, that one may fall away from God, and the Osiris, to find it where it lies and is, in the past. soul may again lose itself in matter.

. . . The mighty properties of God were indeed something For here was the important fact: through Abram and his bond objective, existing outside of Abraham; but at the same time something was come into the world that had never been there before they were also in him and of him. The power of his own soul and which the peoples did not know--the accursed possibility that the was at certain moments scarcely distinguishable from them; it bond might be broken, that one might fall away from God. interlaced and melted consciously into one with Him, and such was the origin of the bond which then the Lord struck with And the plot of the novel is the successive temptations that Abraham. True, it was only the outward confirmation of an came to Jacob and again to Joseph, to let go, to permit one success to take the place of perpetual non-conformity with the cults and practices

139 about them, and to forget 'the silent conviction that God had unique story of Jacob's theft of the birthright from his temperamental twin designs regarding him.' Esau, and the consequent long sojourn in a strange land, with his kinsman Laban. Then how his power and sense of a unique destiny are In return for this silent conviction and conformity to the unique awakened by his love for Rachel, and his return to the land of the designs, each of the generations had the blessing, and the promise. The 'promise.' Next we have the(311)two great incidents in the life of his blessing was a source of power, and the promise for the future. As they favorite son Joseph-- this youth who had more than human beauty and had given the spirit in man the victory over matter, and the soul was more than human intelligence. It is a story of how Joseph first came brought into conformity (310)with its higher origins, the old into the region of Death when he exalted himself above his brothers, uncertainty and meaninglessness of life was now replaced by a quiet and was in return by them put into a pit and then sold into slavery. dignity and confidence, serenity, and above all the power to act. Each is Schooled by this shock Joseph advances himself in the household of now to bring life into the world and to drive out evil and death, and Potiphar in Egypt until he catches the attention and the mad infatuation thus to 'fructify many souls.' As the story progresses, how true this is of of Mut his Egyptian master's beautiful priestess wife. And finally how the beautiful Joseph. Potiphar, even the impotent, is given through him he escaped the last and most formidable temptation. There was a a feeling of self-confidence. He 'strengthens my heart in my own 'parallel between his sin against Potiphar's wife and his earlier sin regard.' Such is the blessing: 'For let a man once have the idea that God against his brothers. Once more he had gone too far, in his craving to has special plans for him, which he must further by his aid, and he will make people "sit up"; once more the waking of his charm, which it was pluck up his heart and strain his understanding to get the better of all his good right to employ, for his own enjoyment and for the honor and things and be their master.' So Joseph rightly exclaims, when he profit of his God, had been allowed to get beyond control, to resisted temptation: 'How could I commit such a folly and sin against degenerate into actual danger.' So again Joseph was punished. But the God?' Though far from perfect, Jacob and his son Joseph avoided folly, Creator in punishing Joseph made 'misfortune a fruitful soil whence with its penalty of 'shame, guilt and mocking laughter,' and remained renewed good fortune should spring.' And this will be the theme in the masters. next novel of the sequence.

Each of the four generations had the 'promise.' This was to be There is much more in this interesting sequence of novels on the 'fulfilment of God.' the meaning of man and his destiny. The author has thrown a wide net of scholarship over the latest research in anthropology, comparative There would come a day, the latest and last, which alone would religion, and myth. And all has been used, as by Goethe in the scenes bring about the fulfillment of God. This day was end and beginning, of the Walpurgis Night in the Faust, allegorically to represent destruction and new birth. . . . The realization of God's great and contemporary states of mind and folkways. But all this, just now, is boundless kingship was reserved for that first and last day, for the day beside the mark. What has Thomas Mann to say of the right faith that of destruction and resurrection; when out of the bonds wherein it still shall furnish a motive for life today and lead us away from the lay, His absolute splendour would rise up before the eyes of all. sensuous poison and impotent ideas of the Magic Mountain? It may even be given us to doubt the final place of Joseph and his Brothers in It is with this central theme that Thomas Mann tells the story of literature, for it is weighted with its message until the axles of the novel Jacob and Joseph, clothing the simple lines of the prose epic in Genesis groan under the burden; and the symbolism obscures the features of life with contemporary spiritual meaning: the story of how Jacob and then like the mask of learning the instructor is forced to wear when Joseph, his favorite son, finally attained the 'blessing.' There is first the he(312)lectures. But again be this as it may, it too is now beside the

140 mark. What has Thomas Mann to say of a motive for life in this to think--in short from moral and reasonable obligation altogether.' But changing and sceptical age? individualism and faith in individual vision is the only possible foundation for successful democracy--that dream of the future and the First he has much to say about this our age of supposed unique promise. change. It is not unique. He dives into the 'well of time' and discovers that the tradition of humanity has been much the same since man This belief in the perfectibility of the individual and in the became man. The rolling sphere-- now man is God, now God becomes supreme worth of vision is the thing that I called at the beginning the man. A period of enthusiasm and a glimpse of vision, and then protestantism of Thomas Mann. 'Forefather' Abraham came out from, disillusionment and sensuous cynicism and the exaltation of the animal. actively protested against, the mass creeds and mass traditions of the Man has always come back after a period of romantic excess to earth people about him. He could act only as the message came from his own and 'reality,' as to a cheerless house on a cold night with no fire on the heart, for in its austere purity and in its assertion of life, he recognized hearth to gladden his return. In exchange for impotent cynicism and the voice of powers greater than his own, spiritual powers that were at make-believe with illusions, our author offers the long tradition of the work to round the sum of human destiny. With these powers he felt man with the blessing and the promise, a perilous tradition for it is the himself called to co-operate to the end that justice and the will of God gift of a vision that will not allow man to falter or use half measures in might be made to prevail. This insight and mission gave him the power his devotion. and serenity that imposed itself upon others and made of him a leader.(314) It is this tradition and faith that has made humanity and given progress, for it alone preserves against stagnation and death. It writes TILL HOPE CREATES XV the history of humanity in the lives of those unique and chosen CONCLUSION individuals that had the faith. This faith is not a creed, nor the philosophy of a school or community. On the contrary it is an insight 'To suffer woes that Hope thinks infinite; possessed alone by the unique individual, a faith in himself and his To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; destiny, which somehow is tied up with that of the spiritual power that To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; is working for intelligence and order, a faith that 'there would come a To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates day, the latest and the last, which alone would bring about the From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; fulfilment of God.' Here is the creed of a professed individualist, in this Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; day when the repudiation of individualism has perhaps gone farther This . . . is to be than at any time since the Roman Empire. Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.' In this individualism, to Thomas Mann, lies the only hope of democracy. For it alone asserts the dignity of man; but it is not an easy Shelley, PROMETHEUS UNBOUND or even a comfortable hope. 'For the collective is a comfortable sphere by comparison with the individual — (313)comfortable to the point of 'TILL hope creates'-- This conclusion to a study that began as a laxity. What the collectivist wants and concedes to himself and others vacation interlude is being written as one more tragedy of human hope is a perpetual holiday. What he loves and longs for is ecstasy . . . The thunders to its climax. Is there any place for hope? Never perhaps since main thing is intoxication, the release from the ego, from its obligation the twilight of the Roman Empire have the grounds for pessimism been

141 more painfully obvious, never the evidence for a fatal defect in human work? How shall the old joy of living be preserved when life comes nature that makes for tragedy more overwhelming; and never was hope with a new and bewildering aspect? How can peace and freedom and more needed, the obstinate hope in human nature and human destiny, security be discovered when nations and groups of people seem whose Declaration and Bill of Rights one can read in Shelley committed to their denial? Prometheus Unbound. For peace and freedom and security are not institutions, nor can Slowly twenty years ago, and then gathering speed as we settled they be written into the formulas of any national or world constitution. down to the task of understanding the aftermath of the First Great War, They are states of mind and depend for their worth on the individual. came the conviction that the old order has passed, and the new, hideous Montaigne, writing in the bitterest days of the religious civil wars of or beneficent--and of its final issue who shall prophesy?--is yet in the France, when intolerance and persecution left no home secure, could making. And then in these last few months disillusionment, the express(316)his passionate love of freedom and his attainment of a shattering of hope, and for some cruel despair. What has the future in tolerable security. store--the immediate future and the distant--for the hope of(315)humanity, as Shelley once dreamed? Is all that the nineteenth The fact that so many guarded homes are destroyed, when this century built in the name of liberalism and human freedom to be one remains unmolested, makes me suspect that they are lost because ground under the ruthless heel of the cynical despiser of human nature? they are guarded . . . I make the assay to keep this corner away from the To save a people must we proclaim its fatal incompetence, and feed public tempest, as I make another corner in my soul . . . [In another and condition it as a farmer his cattle? We are facing a new world, place he adds:] How much it means to her [his soul] to be so situated cruelly aware of its painful novelty. What form shall it take, and how that, whithersoever she casts her eyes, the heavens around her are shall we accommodate ourselves to the change? Is there to be hope for serene; that no desire, no fear or doubt disturbs her atmosphere; that humanity in this changing world? there is no difficulty, past, present, or future, over which her imagination may not roam without harm. These questions we are all asking as this new war moves into the last scene of its drama before the final curtain. Will peace, when And yet Montaigne loved also freedom: 'I am so hungry for there is peace--not a truce like that of the past twenty years, which was freedom that if anyone were to forbid me access to some corner of the only an interlude between two wars--will it answer any of these Indies I should feel my life to be a little constrained. And as long as I questions? But questions that seem obvious now have been persistently can find earth and air free and open elsewhere, I will never live in a asked this quarter century by the sensitive imagination of poet and place where I must hide.' If Montaigne could discover these priceless novelist. gifts in his day of national disaster, is the quest hopeless today?

As one reads the story of this imagination since the turn of the Our contemporaries are embarked on that quest. They return century one sees that there has been a persistent uniformity in the baffled and disillusioned, or ardent and full of hope. The stories of their questions asked of life, in spite of wide difference in the manner of the adventures have been interesting and vital, for of their disappointments answer. A bewildering new world full of novel discomforts created by or faiths we are the participators. They make articulate thoughts or the new science and technology, and man with all his heritage of ideals that with us struggle for utterance. folkways and tradition--how shall these be reconciled? How can old values be rescued in these new regions where he is asked to live and

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To many, doubtless, this inner autobiography of our age will history reads the lesson that human progress is not the necessary sequel appear as a new confusion of tongues. But has it not always been so in of technical progress, are we not all the more inevitably thrown back, every changing age in the past? Yet as we can look back now from our as once was Montaigne, on man's only reliance, himself? perspective, the inconsistencies tend to disappear, like the foot hills of a mountainscape, and the peaks parade in inexorable order. May not the To this pious conclusion of a pagan [he has just quoted Seneca same pattern begin to reappear to those in the next century, who will be on Heraclitus] I will only join these words of a witness in the same able then to smile indulgently at our fancied confusion? There was a condition . . . 'O what a mean and abject thing is man, says Seneca, if day once when a new gospel was preached in a world as heterogeneous he does not rise above humanity!' There we have(318)a good word and as ours, and the assembled multitude, Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, a profitable desire, but at the same time an absurd one. For to make the though(317)divided in language, 'each heard in his own tongue.' So full handful bigger than the hand, and the armful bigger than the arm, and of fervor were the apostles. Is the miracle being repeated today? An to expect to stride further than our legs can reach, that is impossible and interesting question. Perhaps some of the fervor is wanting; and the contrary to Nature. Neither is it possible for man to rise superior to pain of the confusion fraught with more danger. himself and humanity. For he cannot see but with his eyes, nor grasp more than he can hold. We shall find that the new in this literature of our day of swift change is perhaps a new significance given to the age- old question of Perhaps a Montaigne is more needed today than even a Dante. man and nature. Old faiths have been abandoned, new faiths are yet in the making; but new emphasis has been put on the meaning of faith. But could there have been a Montaigne without first a Dante? We know a little more of the essential needs of human nature, and Could the great essayist have had his chastened faith in human nature above all the crying creed of harmony and peace, both inner and outer. without first the vision of a Dante? Grant that the universe of Dante, Bitter disillusionment and despair have been the price of knowledge. created for the glory of God and the edification and intimate home of This knowledge is now being put to service. man, has nothing in common with the revelation of the new science. Grant that even this our own physical universe, as physics tells its Aldous Huxley, who as keenly as any, is sensitive to the pain of story, is a thing that even our wildest imagination cannot picture. Grant the lost generation between the tragedy of two wars, points the way: that there is no cosmic design in the story of human destiny, and that its 'There is no remedy except to become aware of one's interests as a end will be as banal as a freezing star. Grant all this, and yet something human being, and, having become aware, to learn to act on that remains even more precious than all the great renunciations, man and awareness. Which means learning to use the self and learning to direct these his human attributes of greatness and folly. These were the the mind.' substance of Dante's vision, to which all else were attributes. And these science cannot reason away, for it was by them that science came into 'Aware of oneself--aware of oneself as a human being'--is it not being. This the sceptic Montaigne knew, but before him came the man precisely with this that each of these authors from Hauptmann to Mann of faith Dante. is chiefly concerned? For in a way the very disillusionment that has come to science and history, disillusionment all the greater because of This restless, creative, grotesque and wise, comic and tragic the optimism of science in its youth, has willy-nilly thrown man back human nature has been and still is the theme of great literature. Not on himself as perhaps never before. If the world of science is unplastic long ago the poet Bridges described the old- new ideal: and seems to have no consistency with the needs of human nature, if

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Strong-minded, strong-hearted, healthfully so at ease. Our age will not be satisfied with an easy optimism, and prefers this moral of Eliot Gerontion to the sonnet by Robert Bridges. And then added a more detailed prescription: In consequence as we have surveyed the works of some of its Who builds a ship must first lay down the keel leading authors, men who might be taken as types of the contemporary Of health, whereto the ribs of mirth are wed: mind, by far the larger number seem disillusioned and what once might And knit, with beams and knees of strength, a bed have been called pessimistic. The seeds of their malady--if we can call For deeds of purity, her floor and ceil.(319) their resentment against the commonplace an illness--were sown in the Upon her masts, Adventure, Pride, and Zeal, decades (320)before the Great War. Those years were the aftermath of To fortune's wind the sails of purpose spread: the triumph of humanitarian liberalism of the nineteenth century, and a And at the prow make figured maidenhead natural reaction. The first war only strengthened in the minds of those O'er ride the seas and answer to the wheel. then in middle age the conviction that human nature and civilization And let him deep in memory's hold have stor'd could not be accepted at face value, that at best human institutions Water of Helicon: and let him fit offered only a perilous security, and that the discovery of peace and The needle that doth true with heaven accord: happiness, the first and last human adventure, may also be a quixotic Then bid her crew, love, diligence and wit paradox. In consequence, most of our authors might well be described With justice, courage, temperance come aboard, as reading the moral of contemporary disintegration. And at her helm the master reason sit. Behind the objective naturalism of Gerhart Hauptmann's novels The grief of our contemporary mind is that in our swiftly and dramas there is always the passionate cry of the lonely creative changing institutions and faiths, as in a hurricane, it is only too easy to soul who finds himself distressed by his inability to return to the Eden be blown out of the course where needle readings are meaningless, and of primitive innocence and sensuous art. He has inherited the German the present confusion and blind will to survive banish for the moment orthodox doctrine of conformity and its inhibitions and repressions; but all thought of the future and the end of the voyage. Much, then, in the against this is the ever alert revolt of the creative imagination of his art. works of our contemporary minds seems directed by the immediate and The harmony of human nature, the joyous, spontaneous life his almost unconscious will to survive, as long as the violence of the imagination craves, for him can never be attained in a world as it is hurricane emphasizes the contrast between man and the inhospitable today. This is the central theme of most of his novels and dramas; and world in which he is forced to live. Wit, justice, courage, temperance, so Hauptmann, even when he celebrated his seventieth anniversary, is and reason seem at times futile virtues to deal with situations that will the contemporary European turning his back upon Europe and not recognize them: searching a Griechischer Früling he knows in his reason never existed. What can be his attitude now that Hitler has come to sinister power? . . . Think Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices Not wholly unlike him is his French contemporary in age, Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues André Gide. Only Gide never, like Hauptmann, even for a moment Are forced upon us by our impending crimes. allowed himself to be drawn to the creed of naturalism and its objective These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree. study of man in his environment. From the beginning he was a solitary, like Rousseau, making a shrine of his own idiosyncrasies and a liturgy

144 of his service to his moods. He too is a lonely soul dedicated to the cult Humanity wears masks, is doomed by its very nature to assume of an insatiable moi, a deity that demands the complete sacrifice or accept the disguise prescribed by accident or circumstance. This is (321)of all worldly obligations and responsibilities. Unlike Hauptmann, the irrevocable human destiny from the beginning, and its highest Gide sought to make the sacrifice. More recently he has learned the comedy is that it so rarely knows its fate, but instead accepts the mask moderation that all must accept with age. at its face value, and tries according to circumstance to act as though it were real. That the mask worn yesterday differs from that worn the day But our process of disintegration has taken other directions than before or today makes no difference to this naive faith in its ultimate the revolt against the commonoplace world that most accept at face reality. And we try to pluck what happiness we can in these jumbled value. There have been those that have made a case against the roles that life in its meaninglessness makes us play. What is the real integrity of human personality. In point of time Proust was the first to personality behind the kaleidoscope of shifting masks in this show that the only real moments in life were those accompanied by masquerade ball of living, to this question this master psychologist deep sentient vision. These, because the blare of the present is so offers no answer, except this: the wise man is he who knows he too complex and miscellaneous and irresponsive, he found only in wears a mask and thus can smile at the serious make-believe of others. memory, memory released by some perhaps quite irrelevant sensation But with this contempt for human nature, or its avoidance by Proust of the present, unlocking the doors of the past, and flooding the present and others, is it any wonder that the way is made easy for the dictator with its treasures. These sentient moments to him were the only reality, who would put it in chains? because they are timeless, and recoverable at will by those who possess the key. They confer upon the possessor a species of immortality, when O'Neill cannot find it in his heart to fling at life the hollow the real personality, not the commonplace of every-day life, stands laugh of the cynic. But at the same time he knows well enough that revealed. Thus personality, instead of the statistical time table of days personality carries within itself the fatal charge that given the right and weeks and years as most conceive it, is a string of the radiant beads opportunity detonates in tragedy. Who can feel assured of his own of memory, each complete, perfect, and defying the statistical tyranny stability? Release the unexpected spring and, like a jack-in-a-box, what of time. Proust's deep introspection opened up for those who have eyes strange, unpredictable, and contradictory personalities even the most new visions of human nature. But at a cost, the loss of time and commonplace will disclose. Aghast at the strange interludes he continuity. Personality no longer has a plot, like a drama or novel, but discovered, O'Neill once turned to the shoulder of traditional religion to is a series of radiant episodes. But how skilfully, like an epicure, he furnish a faith and a motive for life that alone can arrest the process of probes these to discover their latent flavor. disintegration. It is only this that can cleanse the mind of its perilous stuff, and allow the motives of hope and love to prevail. It is not a Though Proust thus denies reality to life accepted at face value, creed with him or a philosophical conviction; much rather it is an he gained a certain pleasure in retiring into this world of re-echoing instinct, lost since naive childhood, but again making its voice heard memory. Pirandello on the contrary gained no pleasure from his insight across his errant years. It is a confession rather than a profession. into the futile masquerade that he found life to be, none except the cynic's hollow laugh of triumph in proclaiming his discovery to the There is something so simple and persuasive about the oriental masquerading world, a pleasure at the same time masochist and sadist. mysticism of Tagore and so perfectly adapted to give(323)an It seems purely an intellectual exercise, but below the hollow mockery acceptable philosophy for this life that it seems paradoxical to include more than once one senses the suppressed pain.(322) him among those who see human life in its disintegration. The luxuriant charm of his poetry, like the music of his voice to one who

145 has heard him and felt his power, hides the essential nihilism that is the watch the disintegration of human nature in its conflict with reality, very basis of the philosophy of India. Where the Western mind has none is more moving and exquisitely human than the philosopher-poet admitted scepticism and suspended judgment, Indian philosophy since who once tried to be also a man of the world and find his way home to Buddha has made the final gesture of denial. The West in consequence life. can compromise with doubt and maintain its intellectual and moral dignity. But with Maya, illusion, and Nirvana, complete extinction of 'Aware of one's interests as a human being'--it is because all of personality in the unassessable Infinite, the finite and illusory human these thinkers and creative poets are so painfully aware of some special can draw up no protocols that have the slightest hint of reality. The best interest to the exclusion of others that may be quite as important, that that this inheritor of a long poetic tradition can say to a distressed and they fail in our confusion of tongues to find the utterance that will be bewildered age, when reduced to prose, is to acknowledge the illusion, convincing as were once the proclaimers of the gospel that transformed reduce life to the simplest and sweetest routine possible, and, turning Europe. Each is concerned with his own painful discomfort. What shall one's back upon the disagreeable and ugly, learn the selfless lesson of I do to be saved in a world that is hastening to its moral and aesthetic love. If all life could be converted into an abode of peace, a disintegration, such is the question each asks, as he searches the cause Shantinikatan, and if one always had the master's voice to rouse the of his malady. Each in his way is a bewildered Noah, reading the signs heart and stimulate the imagination--but the world today has Hitlers of the coming deluge, busy with the plan of an ark that may carry him and Mussolinis and martyrdoms of decency and liberty that loudly deny to safety, and shuddering with apprehension at the inadequacy of the they are illusory, and seem hopelessly beyond the ministration of design. selfless love. But though the design may be inadequate there has been at least To turn from the mystic to a true-blue and Western sceptic is the one great compensation: one and all they have deepened our like coming from the scented artifice of a conservatory into the knowledge of the needs and resources of human nature. With the magic exhilaration of a frosty night and the stars. For the essences that George of their sensibility they have made clear even to the most obtuse that Santayana would live with, if he can, are not unlike the stars on a human nature is a thing unique and rebellious against the threatened winter night. They gleam, but they give no warmth; they are points of triumph of banality, routine, or regimentation. They will not accept light, but have no substance visible to human sense; they illumine the anything less than excellence, whose standards shall be of one's own heavens from horizon to horizon, but have no points of the compass, creation. Though far less picturesque than their(325)romantic and offer little aid to one on a treacherous pathway. For Santayana, predecessors, the Don Juans, Fausts, Prometheuses, Manfreds, and when he doubted the reality of life and its appurtenances and gave Cains of a century ago, they are, each in his way, the creators of their reality only to the essence of things, the ghosts of even Plato's ideas, own universe, its advocates and judges. Nothing less than complete could find his happiness only(324)with the stars. One can greatly be sovereignty can bring them happiness, and because, like their romantic happy with the Milky Way as companion; but there comes a time when predecessors, they find themselves in a world of triumphant banality or one must give up this play and set about the commonplace business of falseness, they are from the outset doomed to defeat. finding one's way home through the dark. This compromise with the dark the poet-philosopher finds unsavory and tragic to make; for he There are on the other hand not a few who have resolutely hates the ugliness and imperturbability of life, its unexpectedness and striven to discover a new harmony, which will take into account an brutalities; and none of the rules of the game with stars offer aid or awareness of all man's interests as a human being. To them still as to understanding. And yet of all those from Hauptmann to Santayana, who the poet Shelley, man can become 'good, great and joyous, beautiful

146 and free,' though at the cost of pain and discipline. In their novels or Germany seemed hardly necessary to make the lesson obvious of the poems they offer some hope, or suggest its conditions, that again potency of a spirit that animates and gives value to the members of an human nature may discover itself and peace. organic group. But to save civilization and culture these must be Men of Good Will. Recent history is making it painfully obvious that men Conversion to a new creed came only recently to Aldous can be inspired by a will that is Satanic in its cynical contempt for Huxley and changed him from satirist to prophet. So startling was the human nature and devotion to evil. change that his Eyeless in Gaza became a best seller and his Ends and Means not far behind in popularity. His remedy for a world now in the Sholokhov has in two novels vividly portrayed the genesis and fifth act of a tragedy, though new in method of application, savors of exodus of the will that became Soviet Russia. It is the corporate state the prescription of the world's great religious leaders, even of Gandhi that became the motive of religion for Russia, and the inspiration for of India. Eradicate greed and make the fruits of benevolence prevail by action. The story of how slowly this consciousness of a power that founding societies of friends. Huxley might almost be classed as a neo- surpasses all individual power, and is greater than the aggregate of all Quaker. And who is there that has not admired--from a distance--the the individuals, came to Russia in the pain of a war and the greater beautiful consistency of the Society of Friends? The world calls them bewilderment that followed is the story of the coming of a new visionary: is Aldous Huxley on the quest of their vision? religion, the religion of the State. The State is a spirit, more real than the individuals that compose it, and its service a liturgy that demands In a search that covers the whole panorama of the Europe of our man's whole endeavor. It is a state worthily founded, for it is made of generation Jules Romains casts a wide net to discover the Men of Good those that directly contribute to its health, the workers. The drones and Will from whom may radiate the influence that can restore sweetness those who cannot(327)dedicate themselves to its welfare are ruthlessly and light. But his search is based upon a scientific conviction that the liquidated, as an act of public sanitation. It is interesting how literature, individual man, even the leader, is yet the incomplete human being. even in states that preserve the idea of individual freedom, has Man discovers his full nature only in the aggregate of a community responded and taken sides until there are those that maintain there can of(326)which he is an organic part. This aggregate is an essence, a be no worthy book unless it is class conscious and is inspired by a spiritual power, even an inspiration and motive for life, such as no Communist or totalitarian mission. unattached individual can ever discover in solitude. His idea is in accord with some newer interests in biology; and he would apply our In Russia, in Germany, and to some extent in Italy, the State has newer knowledge to the study of human communities and their become the Church that claims the religious allegiance of the elect, the influence upon behavior and happiness. sons and daughters of the congregation. Thus we seem to be at the beginning of a new tradition. But there have been many who have While Romains was brooding over this new means for the turned with ready faith to the long tradition that the nineteenth century regeneration of a Europe bewildered by war and its aftermath, was on the point of rejecting, the tradition of the catholic, universal, revolution after revolution showed what could be done by men en church. It and its creed, to these new converts, seem to offer the only masse. The Bolshevist party in Russia, a group devoted to one alternative to the new tradition of the totalitarian state and the unanimism, had scarcely settled down to make order out of the debris smothering of many of the deeper spiritual needs of man. in Russia when the Fascisti in Italy again showed the power of a devoted community, the power of the unanimism of even a small As T. S. Eliot and many others feel, when man's god is purely minority over the heterogenous and divided many. The Nazi success in secular, and the interest in his service only the gross economic and

147 political motives of life, the incitements to its service and its liturgies His God is by no means the omnipotent Jehovah of the old tend themselves to become more and more 'gross and violent tradition; and his world is far from the best of all possible worlds in its stimulants,' that reduce the mind 'almost to a savage torpor.' Witness progress and perfection. Evil is as potent as good, and stupidity and the repeated purges, the 'liquidation' of the unregenerates, the crass presumption as potent as intelligence, perhaps more potent. callousness, and now the unredeemed brutality of totalitarian war. The Against these it is the will of Deity to do continual battle that good and state may be a god, but he is a god of evil--no better than the combined reason may prevail. But he needs the co-operation of the chosen man, motives of his high priest and his lowest worshippers. To do him and the mark of his choice is heightened intelligence and dauntless service his priests and prophets and soldiers must resort to the language purpose. The end of this warfare is the 'fulfilment of God' and the and actions of the hashish-inspired savage. 'fructifying of many souls.' It is a glorious enterprise. Thus Thomas Mann founds a Church Militant, like the Protestant reformers of an The only alternative, some say, in this day when all stand on the early day, who(329)felt that they must come out and be separate, and brink of State worship, is the Church, the tradition of Christianity. Its the sign of their calling they found in the unique inner voice. gospel is one of peace. Its awareness, so it is argued, is of man's deepest needs as a human being. And its great mystery of the A return to the tradition of disciplined individualism, and the atonement is the mystery of the power and the scope of love. Its supreme value of the unique individual. It is high time. The victories of discipline is of the whole(328)nature of man; pride of the intellect, science are all of them gained by those who would not accept the world pride of the will, pride of passion, must be disciplined to a new at face value. The great moral victories likewise are gained by the humility by the ever repeated atonement of the cross. Its postulates on separate individual who is convinced that he is allied with spiritual the nature of God and man and their relationship are necessary that man powers that make for righteousness. may think clearly; its rule of life that man may live cleanly and inherit the City of God. And as its great vision was once set forth in Such in brief are some of the main threads in the complicated compelling poetry by the world's greatest poet, that he might lead man pattern that one might call the contemporary mind in this day of swift from a state of sin and danger to a state of blessedness, so again in this change. It is serious, and its literature serious as perhaps never before in later day, this vision of man's true nature may come again to a Church human history. For this reason there has been little to distinguish it in regenerated and redeemed. So compelling is the faith of the new imaginative poetry; and where there has been poetry it has been Catholic. didactic rather than lyrical. It has discarded, perhaps as unworthy of its seriousness, the imagery and dress of the old poetic tradition, preferring Against this community of Saints, who in their community to come nearer to the rhythm of speech and its idiom. It has preferred at discover God, stands the eternal protestant, who can know God only times even to be wilfully obscure and urge its reader to work to when he speaks to the individual conscience. For only as he discovers decipher its meaning, rather than to impose upon its reader by God within can he also become aware of his full interests as a human sweetness and charm. It has left the realm of nature and the rural scene being. Here is an aristocratic tradition and individualistic, a faith for a and become consciously urban, knowing more of the noise and leader and breaker of idols. Instead of finding truth and life in the spirit confusion of the street, the sweat of the factory, the din of the machine of a community, it there finds more often superstition and death. Of shop, and the rattle of impending war, than the purling of streams and such texture is the religion that Thomas Mann finds as the only possible the breath of the forest and mountains. Few poets have been able to motive to do battle against the evils and illusions of our day. indulge the luxury of the pleasures of the imagination when the world is marshalling for totalitarian war.

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Is there a hope in a world thus distraught, with its physicians apparently See especially I believe, a symposium by various writers, Allen and in as hopeless a confusion of tongues? Is it now too late? Must we at Unwin. last, with a gesture of despair, turn from idealists and thinkers and those † with imagination to the prose of the scientists who would consider the See a definition of religion in a recent book by a psychologist: ways of the ant and from the insect learn wisdom? Professor 'Religion, at bottom, is always the experienced frustration or failure of Hogben(330), a biologist, carries an air of complete authority.* His human effort as human, together with the real possibility (believed in, recipe is as simple and as ruthless as the totalitarian behavior of the if not actually experienced or discovered) of such a relation with Nazi state, only deflected to more generous and humane ends. Turn the superhuman reality as will enable the frustration to be overcome.' The problem of human happiness over to the biologists and psychologists State as an idea and reality will serve and is serving as just such a and their efficiency engineers, and, presto, there will be no more superhuman reality. See Sidney Herbert Mellom ,The Bearings of problem. Is the answer quite so simple? What is happiness? Even the Psychology on Religion. (331) latest New Deal, as each of its predecessors, has stumbled on this age- old question. How can it be secured? Least successfully, perhaps, as the millions of the New Religion of the State with the missionary zeal Aldous Huxley guesses, can it be decanted from the retorts and test- of new crusaders proclaim its efficacy with tanks and bombs. The tubes of a scientist's laboratory. As we have seen in these chapters of apostles of the older faith in the traditional church are no less zealous, contradictory search, it is a vapor too etherialized and evanescent ever though their appeal is by the meek voice of suffering humanity. One to be captured in the net of any scientific formula. can never quite forget the moving pathos of a recent Papal Encyclical. The Church 'spreads its maternal arms towards the world not to Happiness and salvation for the individual, happiness and dominate but to save . . . What age has been, for all its technical and salvation for the community, large and small, of which he is a member, purely civic progress, more tormented than ours by spiritual emptiness these are the two poles between which this search has wavered. and deep-felt interior poverty? . . . [The fault of the age is] contained in Happiness through individual effort, happiness through a larger faith in those ideas which do not hesitate to divorce civil authority from every some institution and creed, to which the individual can whole-heartedly kind of dependence upon the Supreme Being . . . and from every devote himself, these have been the motives of the quest. Faith in restraint of a higher law derived from God as from its source.' This is as oneself, faith in some religion, can one or the other of these be again official in its appeal as the encouraging shout of Hitler that the established? The religion may not be a supernatural one, but its need is offensive now begun will make history German for a thousand years. most keen when human efforts seem vain, and the individual longs for a shoulder against which he can lean in his hour of defeat.† Where can Where in the midst of this battle is there room for quiet such a shoulder be discovered? reflection, which alone can assure the faith of the individual? As individuals and nations gird themselves for the inevitable, rising en Perhaps never before in the history of the world has the issue masse to attack or defend, what hope is there for peace and freedom? been made so obvious. From the region of literature and ideas the To a thoughtful imagination there is no need today for a dash of conflict has been carried into politics and now cynicism to see the history of the future a pattern of ideologies in conflict and its chapters marked by a succession of breathing spaces to ______condition the new generation for the next round. Huxley in the Eyeless * in Gaza has this philosophy of history in a nutshell. 'All modern history is a history of the Idea of Freedom from Institutions. It is also the

149 history of the Fact of Slavery to the Institutions.' It seems never so true understanding of human nature, can serve in this final assessment, for as today. What hope is there for faith in the individual and for peace their human nature is only partial and impotent. For all of these in one and freedom? way or another are not realistic, or refuse the complete view of the world and the nature of man. Hope, if(333)there can be hope, must find Faith in an institution which shall secure for humanity peace its evidence in a complete realism, and acceptance of life as it is. and freedom? Is not Hitler's address to the German people couched in this well-known formula? The gain of (332)freedom through the loss of Montaigne in the closing darkness of another epoch of acute freedom. But like peace and freedom an institution is also only a state distress was faced with the same human problem. Where could he of mind translated more or less indifferently into generous or intolerant discover hope and peace? It was then as now a time of warring formulas, and can be no better than the individuals that are its devoted institutions and intolerant creeds and a bitter cruelty that seemed to soldiery. Its intolerance or its mildness, its savage cruelty or its genial deny all human virtue. Should he like others lift his eyes to the blessed benevolence or its careless apathy, has everything in common with vision and accept the shoulder of a superhuman faith? There is no those who minister in its temple. It lives with the ardent faith that passage in all literature more full of significance for our day, and yet created it, it dies with its dying embers. If there is to be hope in the more difficult, than his simple turning from a superhuman aid that institution it must find its first evidence in hope for the individual. might prove illusory to the only one on which he could rely--himself, the free individual. We have seen how he chided the pagan philosopher If the hope can have any semblance to reality, it cannot be one for his desire to throw the human burden on a divine shoulder. Here it that denies the world, or science, or any of the ugliness and pain that is is again, in almost the last words he ever wrote: our present lot. Shelley, called the visionary, is never more open-eyed to the need than in the closing lines of his poem of optimism, A man who can rightly and truly enjoy his existence is Prometheus Unbound. absolutely and almost divinely perfect.

To suffer woes that Hope thinks infinite; We seek other conditions because we know not how to To forgive Wrongs darker than death or night; enjoy our own; and go outside of ourselves for want of knowing To defy Power, which seems omnipotent. what it is like inside of us. So it is no use raising ourselves on stilts, for even on stilts we have to walk on our own legs. And Hope must be realistic. No escapist will serve humanity's turn in sitting on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting on this crash of two worlds, the physical and moral. No exquisite doctrine our behind. of illusion, Maya, of the oriental mystic, with all of its fragrance of poetry will other than defraud when humanity is stripped of illusion to The most beautiful lives, in my opinion, are those which its shirt. No philosophic nihilism and poetic star play with essences of a conform to the model of common humanity, with order, but Santayana can restore man's faith in himself. Science has gone too far, with nothing wonderful or extravagant. and played the major role in Western thought too long for the West to turn on science and rend it as the creature responsible for the present He will accept no 'pious wish but a vain one,' but will catastrophe. For science is only an instrument, and will prove look for hope only where its evidence is unmistakable: beneficent or baleful only as the individual who puts it to use is wise or a fool. No Gide or Proust, much service as they have done to the

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I was already considering to which of my friends I could more free in a state, where he lives under a general system of law, than commit a needy and ill-fated old age; after turning my eyes in in solitude where he is independent.' all directions I found myself stripped to my shirt. When a man falls plumb, and from so great a height, it must be into the arms (335) of a strong and firm affection that is favoured by Fortune; such an affection is rare, if there be any. In the end I saw that it was (336) safest to rely upon myself in my distress; and if it should so fall out that Fortune was too cold in offering me protection,(334)to A SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY entrust myself more to my own and fix my eyes and thoughts THIS bibliography does not pretend to be complete. The books listed more firmly on myself. are those that will be helpful in guiding a reader who wishes to acquaint himself farther with the author named. There are first the On all occasions men are too ready to throw themselves books of general interest which survey the subject as a whole. The into other people's arms, to save their own, which alone are chief works of each of the authors mentioned are given. Only such reliable and powerful, if they can make use of them. Every man works as are distinctly minor or quite irrelevant are omitted. In case of rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no man has turned authors not English, the works are given first with their foreign titles, to himself. followed immediately by the title of the English translation. These are arranged in chronological order with the place and date of publication. Montaigne's self-reliance was the result of as complete a survey Finally there are reference books recommended that should be helpful. of human nature, inner and outer, as was ever made, and a synthesis of all human faculties. He discovered peace and a chastened hope. Will I this age, with its larger regions needing survey, and its synthesis more GENERAL difficult than ever, find a similar serene assurance. We need a Berge André, "'L'Esprit de la litérature moderne,'" Revue des deux Montaigne today, even more than a Dante. The mystical vision perhaps Mondes, 1929. may come later. Better to learn how to use this human nature we have Bertaux F., A Panorama of German Literature (from 1871, to 1931) than to dream of the state of achieved perfection and eternal beauty. trans. by J. J. Trounstine, New York, 1935. (Exceptional for a Better now the workaday world where each individual can keep a bibliography.) corner in his home and heart secure, than the vision of the rose of Bettex A. W., The German Novel of Today, trans. by F. A. Reeve, heaven and the secret of the power that moves the sun and every star. Cambridge, 1939. The blatancy of warring creeds is carrying the moral of humility. This Breton A., What is ?, London, 1936. will bring also in its train a measure of hope--a modest one perhaps and Chandler F. W., Modern Continental Playwrights, New York, 1931. perilous--and of peace, such as this world can give--a peace that comes Daiches David, Poetry and the Modern World, Chicago, 1940. of understanding. It will bring also freedom; for only that man is free, ----- The Novel and the Modern World, Chicago, 1939. as Montaigne understood freedom, who has surrendered himself to Gascoyne D., Survey of Surrealism, London, 1935. reason and substituted calm and clear thinking for the twilight of Lalou René, Histoire de la Littérature Française Contemporaine, Paris, opinion and the tempest of passion. It will not be a sequestered virtue, 1928. cherished only by retirement from the world. On the contrary--and here Lemaitre G., Four French Novelists, Roust, Gide, Giraudoux, Morand, in conclusion I quote Spinoza--'the man who is guided by reason is New York, 1938. (Excellent. Contains a full bibliography.)

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Manly J. M., and Rickert Edith, Contemporary British Literature, New Vivas E., "'Naturalism,'" Kenyon Review, 1941. York, 1935. (An elaborate bibliography.) Michaud Regis, Modern Thought and Literature in France, New York, II 1934. GEORGE SANTAYANA (1863- ) Putnam, Samuel, and others, editors, The European Caravan, New The Works of George Santayana, Triton edition, 14 vols. Limited York, 1931. (An anthology of some of the newer schools.) edition, New York, 1936-7. Read H. E., Contemporary Literature, Form in Modem Poetry, Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, New York, 1900, 1922. London, 1939. A Hermit of Carmel and Other Poems, New York, 1901. The Life of Reason, 5 volumes, New York, 1905-6. -337- 1. Introduction, Reason in Common Sense 2. Reason in Society Read H. E., 3. Reason in Religion Surrealism, London, 4. Reason in Art 1936. 5. Reason in Science

Reade A. R., Main Currents in Modern Three Philosophical Poets-- Lucretius, Dante, Goethe, Cambridge, Literature, London, 1935. 1910. Stansbury M. H., French Novelists of Today, Little Essays Drawn from the Works of George Santayana, Logan Philadelphia, 1935. Pearsall Smith , editor, New York, 1921. Swinnerton Frank, The Georgian Scene, New Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies, New York, 1922. York, 1934. (Contains excellent pictures and also Character and Opinion in the United States, New York, 1924. a bibliograhy.) Lucifer, Cambridge, Mass., 1924. Ward A. C., Twentieth Century Literature, 7th Dialogues in Limbo, New York, 1926. ed., London, 1940. The Realm of Essence, New York, 1927. The following are suggestions for those who wish to explore the trends Platonism and the Spiritual Life, New York, 1927. in contemporary philosophy. None of the books and articles is Scepticism and Animal Faith, New York, 1929. technical. The Realm of Matter, New York, 1930. Haldane J. B. S., Science and Every Day Life, London, 1939. The Genteel Tradition at Bay, New York, 1931. Joad C. E. M., Guide to Modern Philosophy, London, 1924. Poems, New York, 1933. ----- Guide to Philosophy, New York, 1936. ----- Guide to the Philosophy of Morals and Politics, London, 1938. -338- Laird John, A Study in Realism, Cambridge, 1920. Lippmann W., Preface to Morals, New York, 1929. The Last Puritan, New York, Mead G. H., Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 1936. Chicago, 1936 (Chaps. 13, 14, 18). The Realm of Truth, New York, Santayana George, Winds of Doctrine, New York, 1913. 1938. Sullivan J. W. N., Contemporary Mind, London, 1934. The Realm of Spirit, New York, ----- Limitations of Science, New York, 1933. 1940.

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CRITICISM AND APPRECIATION Die Jungfern vom Bischofsberg, Berlin, 1907. Trans. as The Maidens of Ames Van Meter, Proust and Santayana, the Aesthetic Way of Life, the Mount. Chicago, 1937. Griechischer Frülling, Berlin, 1908. Edman Irwin, The Philosophy of Santayana, New York, 1936. Kaiser Karls Geisel, Berlin, 1908. Trans. as Charlemagne's Hostage. (Selections, invaluable to one who wants an introduction to Santayana's Griselda, Berlin, 1909. Trans. as Griselda. ideas.) Der Narr in Christo, Emanuel Quint, Berlin, 1910. Trans. as The Fool Howgate G. W., George Santayana, London, 1938. in Christ, Emanuel Quint, New York, 1911. Ed. P. A. Schilpp, The Philosophy of Santayana, Chicago, 1940. -339- III GERHART HAUPTMANN (1862- ) Die Ratten, Das Drammatische Werk, an edition of his chief plays, two large Berlin, 1911. volumes, commemorating his seventeenth birthday. Berlin, 1932. Trans. as The Dramatic Works, trans. and published in nine volumes. New York, Rats. 1929. (Unless otherwise stated his plays and dramatic poems appear in Gabriel Schillings Flucht, Berlin, 1912. Trans. as this collected edition.) Gabriel Schilling's Flight. Von Sonnenaufgang, Berlin, 1889. Trans. as Before Dawn. Altantis, a novel, Berlin, 1912. Trans. as Altantis, Das Friedenfest, Berlin, 1890. Trans. as The Reconciliation. New York, 1912. Einsame Menschen, Berlin, 1892. Trans. as Lonely Lives. Der Bogen des Odysseus, Berlin, 1914. Trans. as The Die Weber, Berlin, 1892. Trans. as The Weavers. Bow of Ulysses. Kollege Crampton, Berlin, 1892. Trans. as Colleague Crampton. Der Ketzer von Soana, a novel, Berlin, 1918. Trans. Die Biberpelz, Berlin, 1893. Trans. as The Beaver Coat. as The Heretic of Soana, New York, 1923. Hannele, Traumdichtum, Berlin, 1894. Trans. as Hannele in Poetlore, Der Weisse Heiland, Berlin, 1920. Trans. as The Vol. xx. White Savior. Florian Geyer, Berlin, 1896. Trans. as Florian Geyer. Indipohdi, Berlin, 1920. Trans. as Indipohdi. Hanneles Himmelfahrt, Berlin, 1897. Trans. as The Assumption of Hirtenlied, dramatic, fragment, Berlin, 1921. Trans. as Hannele. Pastoral. Die Versunkene Glocke, Berlin, 1897. Trans. as The Sunken Bell. Die Insel der Grossen Mutter, novel, Berlin, 1925. Fuhrmann Henschel, Berlin, 1898. Trans. as Drayman Henschel. Trans. as The Island of the Great Mother, New York, Schluck und Jau, Berlin, 1900. Trans. as Schluch and Jau. 1925. Michael Kramer, Berlin, 1900. Trans. as Michael Kramer. Veland, Berlin, 1925. Trans. as Veland. Der Rote Hahn, tragic-comedy, Berlin, 1901. Trans. as The Des Grossen Kampffliegers, Landfahrers, Gauklers, Conflagration. und Magiers Till Eulenspiegel, Abenteuer, Streiche, Der Arme Heinrich, Berlin, 1902. Trans. as Henry of Aue. Gaukeleien, Gesichte und Traüme, Berlin, 1928. Rose Bernd, Berlin, 1903. Trans. as Rose Bernd. Buch der Leidenschaft, 2 vols., Berlin, 1930. Trans. as Elga, drama, Berlin, 1905. Trans. as Elga. The Book of Passion, London, 1930. Und Pippa Tanzt, Berlin, 1906. Trans. as And Pippa Dances. Vor Sonnenuntergang, Berlin, 1932. Trans. as Before

153

Sunset. La Symphonie Pastorale (Récit), Paris, Hamlet in Wittenberg, Berlin, 1935. 1919. These two trans. as Two CRITICISM AND BIOGRAPHY Symphonies, New York, 1931. Fechter P., Deutsche Dichtung der Gegenwart, Leipzig, 1929. Les Faux-Monnayeurs (Roman), Paris, ----- Gerhart Hauptmann, Dresden, 1922. 1925. Trans. as The Counterfeiters, New Hale E. E., Dramatists of Today, New York, 1911. York, 1927. Hülsen Hans V., Gerhart Hauptmann, Leipzig, 1927. Numquid et Tu . . . ?, Paris, 1926. Lessing O. E., Gerhart Hauptmann in Masters in Modern German Voyage au Congo, Paris, 1927. Literature, New York, 1912. Retour du Tchad (Suite du Voyage au Schlenther Paul, Gerhart Hauptmann, Berlin, 1922. Congo), Paris, 1928. These two trans. as Soergel A., Dichtung und Dichter der Zeit, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1934. Travels in the Congo, New York, 1937. Sulger-Gebing E., Gerhart Hauptmann, Leipzig, 1922. Si le grain ne meurt, Paris, 1929. Trans. If It Die . . . , An Autobiography, New IV York, 1935. ANDRE GIDE (1869- ) Les Nouvelles Nourritures, Paris, 1935. Gide A., Oeuvres Complêtes, Paris, 1932-9. Retour d' l'U.R.S.S., Paris, 1936. Paludes (Sotie), Paris, 1895. CRITICISM AND APPRECIATION Les Nourritures Terrestres, Paris, 1897. Gosse E., Portraits and Sketches, London, 1912. Le Prométhée Mal Enchaîné, Paris, 1899. Trans. as Prometheus Fernandez R., André Gide, Paris, 1931. Illbound, London, 1919. Gouiran E., André Gide, Essai de psychologie littéraire, Paris, 1934. Prétextes (Collection of essays, the most notable on 'Oscar Wilde' and Lalou R., André Gide, Strasburg, 1928. 'Réflexions sur quelques points de littérature et de morale'), Paris, Lemaitre Georges, Four French Novelists, New York, 1938. 1903. Pierre-Quint L., André Gide, sa vie, son œuvre, Paris, 1933. English L'Immoraliste (Récit), Paris, 1902. Trans. as The Immoralist, New trans. by D. M. Richardson, London, 1934. York, 1930. Schwob R., Le Vrai drame d'André Gide, Paris, 1932. La Porte Etroite (Récit), Paris, 1909. Trans. as Strait Is the Gate, New Stansbury M. H., French Novelists of Today, Philadelphia, 1935. York, 1924. Dostoievsky, d'après sa Correspondance, Paris, 1911. Trans. as V Dostoevsky, London, 1926. LUIGI PIRANDELLO (1867-1936) Maschére Nude, Collection of plays in Italian, 2 vols. in one, , -340- 1919. Novelle per un Anno, Florence, 1922-39, 14 vols. Les Caves du Vatican (Sotie), , trans. into English, New York, 1923. Paris, 1914. Trans. as The and two other plays, trans. into English, New Vatican Swindle, New York, York, 1923. 1925. The Outcast, a novel, trans. into English, New York, 1925. Isabelle (Récit), Paris, 1911. Naked, trans. into English in T. H. Dickerson, Chief Contemporary

154

Dramatists, New York, 1930. Bell C., Proust, New York, 1929. Right You Are! (If You Think So), trans. into English in Moses, Dramas Brooks Van Wyck, Opinions of Oliver Alston, New York, 1941. of Modernism, New York, 1931. Dandieu A., Marcel Proust--sa révélation psychologique, London, , trans. into English, New York, 1932. 1930. Horse in the Moon, twelve short stories, New York, 1932. Dugas L., La Mémoire et l'Oubli, Paris, 1929. As You Desire Me, trans. into English, New York, 1934. Ellis H., From Rousseau to Proust, New York, 1935. The Naked Truth and eleven other stories, trans. into English, London, Jäckel K., Bergson und Proust, Breslau, 1934. 1934. Krutch J. W., Five Masters, London, 1930. Three Plays: Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV, Right Lemaitre Georges, Four French Novelists, New York, 1938. You Are! (If You Think So), New York, 1934. Leon D., Introduction to Proust, London, 1940. Better Think Twice About It and twelve other stories, trans. into Moncrieff C. K. Scott, Marcel Proust, An English Tribute, London, English, London, 1934. 1923. Pierre-Quint L., Marcel Proust, sa vie, son œuvre, revised edition, -341- Paris, 1929. English translation, New York, 1927. Stansbury M., French Novelists of Today, London, 1925. CRITICISM AND APPRECIATION Turquet-Milnes G., From Pascal to Proust, London, 1926. Daniel-Rops, Henri, Carte d'Europa, Paris, 1928. Starkie Walter F., Luigi Pirandello, 1867-1936, New York, 1937. VII Vittorini Domenico, The Drama of Luigi Pirandello, Philadelphia, EUGENE O'NEILL (1888- ) 1935. Nine Plays (includes his best), New York, 1940. "'Pirandello Confesses,'" Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. I. Beyond the Horizon, New York, 1920.

VI -342- MARCEL PROUST (1871-1922) A la recherche du temps perdu, Paris, 1913- 1922. The Emperor Jones, Diffrent, The Straw, New York, 1921. (For the English titles of his novels Remembrance of Things Past, see All God's Chillun Got Wings and Welded, New York, 1924. page 114.) Anna Christie, All God's Chillun Got Wings, Different, New York, A good two-volume edition of his Remembrance of Things Past was 1925. published in New York, 1941. The Great God Brown, The Fountain, The Moon of the Caribbees, New LETTERS York, 1926. Correspondence générale de Marcel Proust, 6 vols.; to 1935 published Marco Millions, New York, 1927. by R. Proust and P. Brach; after 1935, S. Proust-Mante and P. Brach. Lazarus Laughed, New York, 1927. CRITICISM AND APPRECIATION Desire under the Elms, The Hairy Ape, Welded, New York, 1928. "'Hommage à Marcel Proust,'" La Nouvelle Révue Française, 1927. Strange Interlude, New York, 1928. Alden D. W., Marcel Proust and His French Critics, Los Angeles, Dynamo, New York, 1929. 1940. Mourning Becomes Electra, New York, 1931. Ames Van Meter, Proust and Santayana, Chicago, 1937. Ah, Wilderness!, New York, 1933.

155

Days Without End, New York, 1934. Rhys Ernest, Rabindranath Tagore, a biographical study, New York, CRITICISM AND APPRECIATION 1915. Clark B. H., Eugene O'Neill, the Man and His Plays, New York, 1929. Thompson E. J., Rabindranath Krutch J. W., American Drama since 1918, New York, 1939. Tagore, Poet and Dramatist, Moses M. J., Dramas of Modernism and Their Forerunners, New York, London, 1926. 1931. Sanborn R., A Bibliography of the Works of Eugene O'Neill, New IX York, 1931. Shipley J. T., The Art of Eugene O'Neill, Seattle, 1928. ALDOUS HUXLEY (1894- ) Winther S. K., Eugene O'Neill, a critical study, New York, 1934. Crome Yellow, New York, 1921. Reprinted London, 1936. Antic Hay, New York, 1923. VIII Proper Studies, New York, 1927. RABINDRANATH TAGORE (1861-1941) Point Counter Point, New York, 1928. Collected Poems and Plays, New York, 1913-37. (This collection is not Those Barren Leaves, London, 1931. complete. It does not include The King of the Dark Chamber.) Brave New World, New York, 1932. Sādhanā, The Realization of Life, New York, 1913. Texts and Pretexts, New York, 1933. Chitra, New York, 1914. The Olive Tree, London, 1936. The Crescent Moon, New York, 1914. Eyeless in Gaza, New York, 1936. The King of the Dark Chamber, New York, 1914. Ends and Means, New York, 1937. Sacrifice and Other Plays, New York, 1917. After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, New York, 1939. The Cycle of Spring, New York, 1917. Grey Eminence, A Biography of Father Joseph, the Right-hand man Personality, New York, 1917. and collaborator of Cardinal Richelieu, New York, 1941. (An excellent The Home and the World, New York, 1919. study of religious mysticism and downright power politics. There is Gitanjali, New York, 1920. (Not the first printing. It was this collection more than a little light thrown by this work on some of our states of that first brought him to the attention of the West.) mind today.) Broken Ties and Other Stories, New York, 1925. CRITICISM AND APPRECIATION CRITICISM AND APPRECIATION Bloomfield Paul, Imaginary Worlds, or the Evolution of Utopia, Lesny V., Rabindranath Tagore, trans. by G. M. Phillips with a London, 1932. foreword by C. F. Andrews, London, 1939. Henderson A., Aldous Huxley, New York, 1936. (Contains a Murray Gilbert, East and West, League of Nations, 1935. bibliography.) Radhakrishnan S., Eastern Religions and Western Thought, London, Maurois Andréé, Private Universe, trans. by H. Miles, London, 1932. 1940. (An interesting discussion of Indian philosophy.) Niebuhr R., "'An End to Illusion,'" The Nation, Vol. 150, No. 26, June 29, 1940. -343- X

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Speech delivered by Adolph Hitler before the German Reichstag on JULES ROMAINS (1885- ) January 30, 1939, Washington, 1939. Mort de Quelqu'un, Paris, 1911. Trans. as Death of a Nobody, New Official translation of the speech delivered by Adolph Hitler before the York, 1914. German Reichstag on April 28, 1939, Washington, German Embassy, Les Copains, Paris, 1922. Trans. as The Boys in the Back Room, New 1939. York, 1937. Speech delivered by Adolph Hitler in the Reichstag--and Germany's Knock, Paris, 1924. proposal to Poland, August 31, 1939, Berlin, 1939, La Vie Unanime, a poem, Paris, 1926. Psyche, trilogy: Lucienne, Le Dieu des Corps, Quand le navire, Paris, CRITICISM 1922-9. Trans. as The Body's Rapture, New York, 1933. The number of books and articles on Hitler is legion. The following are Les Hommes de bonne volonté, Paris, 1932-41. Trans. as The Men of suggestive: Good Will, New York, 1937-41. Adolph Hitler from Speeches, 1933-8, Berlin, 1938. Bayles W. D., Caesars in Goose Step, New York, 1940. -344- Hackett F., What Mein Kampf Means to America, New York, 1941. Haffner S., Germany: Jekyll and Hyde, trans. from the German, New CRITICISM AND APPRECIATION York, 1941. Bidal M., Les Ecrivains de I'abbaye, George Duhamel, Jules Romains, Lewis W., The Hitler Cult, London, 1939. and others, Paris, 1938. Rauschning H., Hitler and the War, Washington, 1940. Cuisenier André, Jules Romains et Unanimisme, Paris, 1935. ----- The Voice of Destruction, New York, 1940. Stansbury N. H., French Novelists of Today, Philadelphia, 1935. Ziemer Gregor, Education for Death, New York, 1941. Turquet-Milnes, Mrs. Gladys Rosaleen, Some Modern French Writers, A study in Bergsonism, New York, 1921. -345- Walter Felix, Unanimism and the Novels of Jules Romains, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 1936. XII

XI MIKHAIL SHOLOKHOV (1905- ) And Quiet Flows the Don, trans. by Stephen Garry, New York, 1934. ADOLPH HITLER (1889- ) Seeds of Tomorrow, trans. by Stephen Garry, New York, 1935. Mein Kampf . The German edition was published by Verlag Frz. Eher, The Don Flows Home to the Sea, trans. by Stephen Garry, New York, 1925 and after. 1940. The first translation, expurgated, London, 1933. First complete translation unexpurgated, New York, 1939. ON PROLETARIAN LITERATURE Another translation copyrighted by Houghton Mifflin, 1939, and Caudwell Christopher, Illusion and Reality, New York, 1918. published by Reynal and Hitchcock, New York, 1939. Fox Ralph W., The Novel and the People, New York, 1937. Proletarian Literature in the United States, edited by Joseph Freeman, SPEECHES New York, 1935. Address before the German Reichstag, January 20, 1934, Berlin, 1934. Proceedings of the American Writer's Congress, New York, 1935.

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Ickovicz M. Marc, La Litérature a la Lumière du Materialisme Gorky M., Judge, a play in four acts, Historique, Paris, 1929. trans. by M. Zakrevsky and B. Clark Lewis C. D., Mind in Chains, London, 1938. , New York, 1924. London Kurt, The Seven Arts, trans. by E. S. Bensinger, London, 1937. ----- Fragments from My Diary, Read Herbert, Art and Society, New York, 1937. New York, 1924. ----- Decadence, trans. by V. SOVIET LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION Dewey, New York, 1927. Following is a selection of the more characteristic novels, poems, and Patrick G. Popular Poetry in plays in Russian Soviet Literature that are available in English Soviet Russia, London, 1929. translation. Six Soviet Plays, ed. by E. Lyons, Andreyev L., Waltz of the Dogs, trans. by H. Bernstein, New York, London, 1935. 1922. Soviet Literature, an anthology, ----- Samson in Chains, trans. by H. Bernstein, New York, 1923. ed. by G. Reavey and M. Slonim, ----- Katerina, trans. by H. Bernstein, New York, 1923. London, 1933. Artsybashev B. M., Jealousy, Enemies, The Law of the Savage Struve G., Soviet Russian (drama), New York, 1923. Literature, London, 1935. Coxwell C., 4 Russian Poems, London, 1929. Deutsch, Babette, and Yarmolinsky A., Russian Poetry--an Anthology( XIII University Library), New York, 1927. Four Soviet Plays, London, 1937. T. S. ELIOT (1888- ) Gorky M., Three of Them, trans. by A. Linden, London, 1931. Thoughts after Lambeth, London, 1931. ----- Other Fires, trans. by A. Bakshy, New York, 1933. Selected Essays, 1917-32, New York, 1932. ----- Reminiscences of Leonid Andreyev, trans. by Katherine Mansfield The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, Cambridge, Mass., 1933. and S. Koteliansky, New York, 1928. After Strange Gods, New York, 1934. ----- On Guard, intro. by R. Prolland, New York, 1932. Collected Poems, 1909-35, New York, 1936. ----- Man Who Was Afraid, trans. by H. Bernstein, London, 1929. Murder in the Cathedral, New York, 1935. ----- Magnet, trans. by A. Bakshy, New York, 1931. Essays Ancient and Modern, New York, 1936. ----- Foma Gordeyev, trans. by H. Bernstein, New York, 1928. The Idea of a Christian Society, London, 1939. ----- Bystander, trans. by B. G. Guerney, New York, 1930. The Family Reunion, A play, New York, 1939. ----- Through Russia: stories, trans. by C. J. Hogarth, New York, 1922. East Coker, London, 1940. ----- Story of a Novel, and other stories, trans. by Marie Zakxevsky, The Dry Salvages, London, 1941. New York, 1925. ----- Lower Depths, drama in four acts, trans. by J. Covan, New York, CRITICISM AND APPRECIATION 1922. Brooks Van Wyck, Opinions of Oliver Allston, New York, 1941. Leavis F. R., New Bearings in English Poetry, London, 1932. -346- Matthiessen F. O., The Achievement of T. S. Eliot, Boston, 1935.

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THE NEW CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHY A Sketch of My Life, Paris, 1930. Maritain J., A Travers le Désastre, New York, 1941. Mario und der Zauberer, Berlin, 1930. Trans. ----- Freedom in the Modern World, trans. into English, New York, as Mario and the Magician, New York, 1931. 1936. Joseph und seine Brüder, Berlin, 1933. Trans. ----- Humanisme Integral, Paris, 1936. Trans. as True Humanism, as Joseph and His Brothers, New York, 1934. London, 1936. Der Junge Joseph, Berlin, 1934. Trans. as The ----- An Introduction to Philosophy, translation, London, 1930. Young Joseph, New York, 1935. Gilson Etienne, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, trans. into English, Joseph in Ägypten, Vienna, 1936. Trans. as New York, 1936. (This is an excellent statement of the new Catholic Joseph in Egypt( 2 vols.), New York, 1938. creed. It is not technical.) Freud, Goethe, Wagner, New York, 1937. The Coming Victory of Democracy, New XIV York, 1938. Achtung Europa, New York, 1938. THOMAS MANN (1875- ) Lotte in Weimar, Stockholm, 1939. Trans. as Buddenbrooks, Berlin, 1901. Translated, New York, 1924. The Beloved's Return, New York, 1940. Königliche Hoheit, Berlin, 1909. Trans. as Royal Highness, New York, Die Vertauschten Köpfe, Eine Indische 1916. Legende, Stockholm, 1940. Trans. as The Der Todd in Vending, Berlin, 1912. Trans. as Death in Venice, New Transposed Heads, New York, 1941. York, 1925. CRITICISM AND APPRECIATION -347- Eloesser A., Thomas Mann, Mensch und Werk, Berlin, 1925. Hamburger Käthe, Thomas Mann und die Romantic, Berlin, 1932. Tonio Kröger, Berlin, Havenstein W., Thomas Mann, der Dichter und Schriftsteller, Berlin, 1914. Trans. with Death 1927. in Venice, New York, Lessing O. E., Thomas Mann, New York, 1912. 1925. Slochower H., Thomas Mann's Joseph Story, New York, 1938. Herr und Hund, Gesang vom Kindchen, ----- Three Ways of Modern Man, New York, 1937. Berlin, 1918. Trans. as A Man and His Dog, Weigand H. J., Thomas Mann's Novel, Der Zauberberg, a study, New New York, 1930. York, 1933. Goethe and Tolstoi, Speech, Berlin, 1923. Included in Three Essays, New York, 1929. -348- Der Zauberberg, Berlin, 1924. Trans. as The Magic Mountain, New York, 1927. (A INDEX Stockholm edition, 1939, has a new and Aeschylus, 136, 137 valuable preface.) Ames, E. S., 197 Bemühungen, Essays, Berlin, 1925. Included Anglo-Catholics, Creed of, 271 in Past Masters, New York, 1933. Aristotle, on harmony, 25

159

Arnold, Matthew, 269 Everyman, 182 Babbitt, Irving, 268 Expressionism, 85 Balzac, Honoré, 244 Faith, Need of, 13 Bergson, Henri, 62, 196; Time and Free Will, 109; Creative Evolution, Faust, 170 109 Fernandez, Raymond, 121 Bhagavat-Gita, 149, 151, 163, 191 Fox, Ralph, The Novel and the People, 241 Bible, 232 Freud, Dr. Sigmund, 9, 112 Bridges, R., 319 Galsworthy, John, 294 Buddha, 16; Buddhism, 188 Gandhi, M. K., 24, 188, 194 Bunyan, John, 61; Pilgrims Progress, 182 Capek, Karl, War with the Newts, 171 -349- Carlyle, Thomas, 223; Heroes and Hero Worship, 236; Latterday Pamphlets, 236; Sartor Resartus, 200, 236 Carroll, Lewis, Alice in Wonderland, 62 Cervantes, Don Quixote, 295 Gide, André, 59 ff., 79, 104, 120, Chosen people, doctrine of the, 224 186, 259, 260, 321; Eternity, Church, return to the, 264 experience of, 73; Mysticism of, Commedia dell' Arte, 82, 84 73; Religion, demand of, 67; Communism, 240 Personality, problem of, 64; Community, idea of the, 197 Instinct, 63; Moment, sentient, Dante, 5, 19, 89, 119, 187, 203, 247, 261, 263, 265, 273, 281, 285, 319 power of, 63; Élan vital, 63; The Discipline, need of, 265 Counterfeiters, 75; If It Die, 62, Dostoevsky, Feodor M., 5, 244, 248 64, 68, 71; The Immoralist, 66, 68; Duhamel, G., 199 Les Nourritures Terrestres, 63, 66; Dumas, A., 243 Numquid et Tu, 67; Strait is the Duns Scotus, 263 Gate, 67; The Vatican Swindle, 74 Einstein, Dr. Albert, 307 Gilson, Etienne, 263, 265 Eliot, T. S., 146, 261 ff., 328; and Dante, 267, 274; Atonement, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 5, 25, Sacrament of the, 289; A contemporary poet, 267; Difficulties in, 226; 38, 80, 129, 194, 203; Faust, 59, Poetry of, 275; Secular, danger of the, 274; Sin of Pride, 288; After 294, 296, 307 Strange Gods, 274, 283; Ash-Wednesday, 278, 282; Burnt Norton, 278; Gorky, M., 42, 248 The Dry Salvages, 278, 279; East Coker, 278; A Family Reunion, 290; Greeks, the, 54 Gerontion, 267, 276, 281; The Hollow Men, 106, 266, 267, 276, 280; Hamlet, 98, 104 Murder in the Cathedral, 278, 284; The secular in, 285; Prufrock, 267, Hamsun, Knut, xi, xii 276; The Rock, 278; The Waste Land, 106, 267, 276, 281 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 37 ff., 321; Emerson, R. W., 245 Christianity in, 50; Compared to Euripides, 86, 136, 137; Iphigenia at Aulis, 112 Shakespeare, 39; Greece,

160 conception of ideals of, 50; Life of for, 177; Life, the perfect, 178; Christ, interest in, 51; Pagan Love, as motivating force, 187; simplicity in Spring in Greece, 54; Mysticism of, 181; Personality, Paganism in The Heretic of Soana, problem of, 186; Science, Huxley's 53; Rousseau, influence of, 39; The knowledge of, 174; After Many a Apostle, 51; The Assumption of Summer Dies the Swan, 189; Brave Hannele, drama of the new New World, 175, 209, 259; Chrome psychology, 40; Before Sunset, 39, Yellow, 175; Ends and Means, 174, 55; Before Sunrise, 39; The Bow of 181, 185, 189, 190; Eyeless in Gaza, Ulysses, 48; The Fool in Christ, 50; 181, 190 The Heretic of Soana, 38, 50; Huxley, Julian, 178 Gabriel Schillings Flight, 37, 44; Huxley, T. H., 175 Meerwunder, 56; The Sunken Bell, Ibsen, H., 80, 86, 87; The Master 38, 44; the artist and society, 45; Builder, 56 problem of convention, 45; The India, life in, 153 Weavers, a sociological document, Isaiah, 220 40 Jeremiah, 194 Hegel, G. W. F., 239 Joyce, James, xi, 109; Flow of Henderson, Philip, The Novel consciousness, 110; Ulysses, 267 Today, 244 Kalidasa, 158 Heraclitus, 62 Keats, John, 22, 25 Hitler, A., 215; Mein Kampf, 219; Kipling, R., 225 Mein Kampf as bible and text book, Koran, 221, 227, 232 221; Mein Kampf, a confession and dedication, 220; 'Anti- -350- parliamentarian,' 224; Der Führer, 223; Religion, theory of, 227; Lawrence, Volkische Staat, doctrine of, 226 D. H., 186 Hogben, Professor Lancelot, 330 Lenin, V. I. U., 188, 209, 215, 226, 239 Homer, 203, 292; Odyssey, romance Liberalism, 204; traditional meaning of, 235 and realism in, 48 Literature, Marxian theory of, 242; as propaganda, 246 Housman, A. E., 8 Lucretius, 92 Hulme, T. F., 272 Luther, M., 293 'Human rights,' theory of, 227 Mahabharata, 151, 158 Humanism, new, 270 Mann, Thomas, 56, 146, 291 ff., 329; Art and Music, place Huxley, Aldous, 122, 169 ff., 194, of, 298; Death, the cult of, 297, 308; Time, ideas on, 299, 282, 326; Experience, compensation 308; Buddenbrooks, 293, 294; Death in Venice, 293, 294,

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298; The Magic Mountain, 292, 293, 295, 296; Joseph and 96; Naked, 95; Right You Are! If You Think You Are, 93; his Brothers, 305, 312; Joseph in Egypt, 310; Tonio Shoot! The Notebook of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematograph Kroeger, 293, 294 Operator, 89; Six Characters in Search of an Author, 92; Maritain, J., 263, 289 The Trap, 80; Trovarsi, 83 Marx, K., 188, 209, 226, 239 Plato, 16, 26, 77, 158, 191; Phaedo, 17; The Republic, 17; Maurras, Charles, 273 Symposium, 17, 160 Maya, doctrine of, 150, 324 Prezzolini, Giuseppe, 91 Middle Ages, return to, 263 Propaganda and Literature, 240 Milton, John, 5, 203, 247 Protestant tradition, the, 293 Modernism, 4, 7 Proust, Marcel, 101 ff., 300, 322; Art and autobiography, Mohammed, 220, 225 122; Difficulties in, 107; Imagery in, 108; Memory in, 110; Montaigne, 203, 235, 274, 290, 316, 334 Moment, the eternal, 118; Personality, problem of, 102, More, Sir Thomas, Utopia, 176 103, 120; Time, problem of, 103; The Guermantes' Way, Mussolini, Benito, 215 115; The Nature in Indian Literature, 154 Neo-Thomists, 263 -351- Newman, Cardinal, 274 Newton, Sir Isaac, 306 Proust, Marcel Nibelungenlied, the doctrine of, 222 (Cont.) Nietzsche, Friedrich, 55, 223, 231; Birth of Tragedy, 143; Past Thus Spake Zarathustra, 128, 141 Recaptured, Nirvana, doctrine of, 150, 157, 324 116; Swann's Odets, Clifford, 4 Way, 114

O'Neill, Eugene, 125 ff., 170, 323; Central theme in, 130; Psychology, the new, 9 Immortality, 141; Influence of Freud, 132; Masks, use of, Radhakrishnan, S., Eastern Religions and Western 128; Religious faith, place of, 140; Ah, Wilderness, 128; Thought, 156, 191 Days Without End, 128, 143, 145; Desire Under the Elms, Ramayana, 158 127, 132, 133; Dynamo, 126, 128; The Emperor Jones, Rauschning, H., Hitler Speaks, 228 127, 131; Great God Brown, 127, 143; The Hairy Ape, 127, Revolution and literature, 240 132; Lazarus Laughed, 128; The Moon of the Caribbees, Rig Veda, 154 127; Mourning Becomes Electra, 127, 130, 133, 136; Rolland, R., Jean Christophe, 209 Strange Interlude, 127, 130, 133, 134 Romains, Jules, 193 ff.; The Death of a Nobody, 205; Pantheism in Indian thought, 155 Manuel de Déification, 206; Men of Good Will, 3, 199, Pascal, Blaise, 12, 75, 274 205, 209, 224, 243; Compared with Sholokhov's Pessimism, 12 novels, 258, 261, 272, 326; Petit Introduction ὰ Pirandello, Luigi, 79 ff., 104, 134, 322; Personality, l'Unanimisme, 206; The Proud and the Meek, 212; question of, 90; Each in his Own Way, 94; Henry IV, 87, Psyche, trilogy, 202; Lucienne, Le Dieu de Corps,

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Quand le Navire (The Body's Rapture), 206, 207, 208; Sādhanā, 156 Unanimism, 199, 200; Verdun, 216 Technology, danger of, 171 Rousseau, J. J., 82; doctrine of Original goodness, 204 Thackeray, W. M., 244; Vanity Fair, 208 Saint Anthony, 55 Tolstoi, Count Leo N., 5, 194, 244; Anna Karenina, Saint Augustine, 68, 187, 220, 263;On memory, 119 182, 259; War and Peace, 209, 253 Saint Bonaventura, 263 Tradition, search for, 262 Saint Francis, 55, 191, 194 Trotsky, L. D., 239 Saint Joan, 220 Unanimism, 199; Literary school of, 200 Saint Thomas, 187, 263 Upanishads, 155, 157, 166 Santayana, George, 15 ff., 324; 'Animal faith,' necessity Ulysses, 109 of, 20; Arts, place of the, 21; Art, as revelation of life, 21; Essences, doctrine of, 23; Hamlet of the 20th -352- century, 15, 30; The sceptic, 19; Science, place of, 21; The Last Puritan, 16, 20, 26, 133, 268; Theme of, 28; Vedas, the, Lucifer, 27; The Life of Reason, 16; Scepticism and 150 Animal Faith, 16; Science, 11; the new, 93; place of, Virgil, 292 194 Vision, 306 Shakespeare, 60, 113, 203 Wesley, John, 263 Shelley, P. B., 4; Prometheus Unbound, 241, 315, 333 Wheeler, Professor W. M., Foibles of Insects and Men, Sholokhov, Mikhail, 239 ff., 327; Impersonal attitude 196 of, 258; 'Socialist Realism' in, 246; And Quiet Flows Whitman, Walt, 200, 245 the Don, 246, 252; Seeds of Tomorrow, 246, 249 Wolfe, Thomas, xi, 4 Smith, Sidney, 50 Woolf, Virginia, 109 Socialist Realism, 240 Wordsworth, William, 199 Socrates, 54 Yoga, doctrine of, 167 Sophocles, 86, 136, 137, 203, 269; Oedipus at Colonos, Zola, E., 86; Le Débâcle, 247, 248; Naturalism in, 41 270 Spinoza, 335 -353- Stalin, Joseph, 240 Steed, Wickham, Our War Aims, 219 Steinbeck, John, xi, 4 Strindberg, August, 80, 85, 86, 127 Super-organism, the, 195 Swift, J., Gulliver's Travels, 175 Tagore, Rabindranath, 149 ff., 188, 194, 300, 323; Symbolism in, 157; Chitra, theme of, 159; The King of the Dark Chamber, 163; Sanyasi, or the Ascetic, 161;

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