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Middlebrow Mystics: Henri Bergson and British Culture, 1899-1939

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Middlebrow Mystics: Henri Bergson and British Culture, 1899-1939 View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Northumbria Research Link Middlebrow Mystics: Henri Bergson and British Culture, 1899-1939 Helen L. Green PhD 2015 Middlebrow Mystics: Henri Bergson and British Culture, 1899-1939 Helen Louise Green A Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Northumbria at Newcastle for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Research undertaken in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences. May 2015 Declaration I declare that the work contained in this thesis has not been submitted for any other award and that it is all my own work. I also confirm that this work fully acknowledges opinions, ideas and contributions from the work of others and that all procedures for ethical approval have been followed. I declare that the word count for this thesis is: 78545 Name: Signature: Date: Abstract Middlebrow Mystics: Henri Bergson and British Culture, 1899-1939 This thesis explores the influence of Henri Bergson’s philosophy on middlebrow literature between 1899 and 1939. In doing so it engages with the work of Joseph Conrad, Algernon Blackwood and John Buchan as well as critics John Mullarkey, Suzanne Guerlac, Michael Vaughan and Michael Kolkman who, over the past three decades, have instigated a significant interdisciplinary revival and reassessment of Bergson’s work. Specifically, this study builds on, yet also extends, the work of literary critics like Paul Douglass, Hillary Fink, Mary Ann Gillies and S.E. Gontarski who since the nineteen nineties have produced extensive studies exploring the impact of Bergson’s philosophy on modernism. While each of these studies confirm the considerable impact Bergson wrought on the culture and literature of this period, each limit their focus to canonical ‘highbrow’ modernist writers. Given the pervasive popularity of Bergson at this juncture, and following the spirit of recent calls in modernist studies for more inclusive, ‘flexible and perspicuous’ interpretations of the period’s literature, this project aims to extend the parameters of existing research to encompass early twentieth century ‘middlebrow’ fiction in the belief that Bergson represents a significant cultural and ideological bridge between these, too often, polarised literary streams.1 As such, this study expands on the work of scholars like Nicola Humble, Kate Macdonald, Erica Brown and Mary Grover who, to borrow Humble’s term, have sought to ‘rehabilitate’ and reassess critical perceptions of the early twentieth century’s ‘middlebrow’ writing. Following a detailed explanation of Bergson’s philosophy, its place in early 1 Michael Levenson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1. twentieth century British culture and it pertinence to literary studies today, I will move on to discuss key works by Joseph Conrad, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen and John Buchan in relation to Bergson’s philosophy, placing particular focus on their more mystical aspects and thematic, structural applications. Such an investigation does not aim to negate the unique contribution Bergson made to inspiring, elucidating and supporting the formal innovations of modernism but hopes to emphasise the fact that his ideas resounded far beyond this context, capturing the attention of an unexpectedly broad spectrum of society in often unexpected, unconventional and as yet, under-explored ways. Contents Abbreviations 1 Introduction 2 1. Henri Bergson and British Culture 12 2. Bergson, Modernism and Middlebrow Literature 40 3. Bergson: Key Terms and Ideas 64 4. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim: Language, Self and Evolution 94 5. Algernon Blackwood and The Centaur: Dream, Mysticism and the Divided Self 129 6. Arthur Machen and The Hill of Dreams: Symbolism, Solipsism and the Swan-song of Decadence 164 7. John Buchan and Sick Heart River: Bergson, Empire and Equilibrium 200 Conclusion 229 Bibliography 236 Abbreviations Works by Henri Bergson CE Creative Evolution IM An Introduction to Metaphysics L Laughter, An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic MM Matter and Memory TFW Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness TMSR Two Sources of Morality and Religion Key Works Discussed in this Thesis C The Centaur by Algernon Blackwood EBT Episodes Before Thirty by Algernon Blackwood H Hieroglyphics by Arthur Machen HD Heart of Darkness and Other Stories by Joseph Conrad HOD Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen LJ Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad MHD Memory Hold the Door by John Buchan SHR Sick Heart River by John Buchan 1 Introduction Background The past three decades have revealed an increasing movement to redefine literary modernism in much broader, more inclusive terms than those established by modernism’s Anglo- American critical tradition.2 In the second edition of The Cambridge Companion to Modernism (2011), Michael Levenson observes that today’s modernist scholars ‘produce increasingly ambitious acts of contextualisation alongside more inclusive histories.’3 As Levenson asserts, this movement is in part a response to the new century’s desire to move beyond the ‘aging giant’ of Modernism: an attempt to step out of the shadow cast by canonical figures such as ‘Joyce, Woolf, Stein and Eliot, Einstein and Brecht, Freud and Marx’.4 This transition has brought with it a responsibility to challenge and clarify the features associated with the term ‘modernism’: a designation which, though so evocative and familiar, is likewise tantalisingly nebulous and unstable. Indeed, as the Modernist era fades into the past, it has become increasingly apparent that in order to provide a coherent map of our literary heritage there is a need to embrace, parse and elucidate the complex nuances and interactions of the movement as it vied with its antecedents and contemporary popular writing and culture; movements which traditional critical interpretations of the era have so often placed in opposition to one another. As Leon Surette speculates in The Birth of Modernism (1993), it is only recently and especially so, now we have crossed into and established ourselves in the twenty-first century, that literary researchers have gained the critical distance necessary to meet this challenge.5 2 A view of ‘high’ modernism particularly associated with critics such as Hugh Kenner, Donald Davie and Malcolm Bradbury. 3 Michael Levenson, introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, ed. by Michael Levenson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1. 4 Ibid. 5 Leon Surette, The Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats and the Occult (Montreal: McGill- Queen’s University Press, 1993), 3. 2 The historical turn in late twentieth and twenty-first century literary criticism has revealed that the modernists were not the opponents of tradition, history and mass culture they have been represented to be but rather astute, culturally engaged individuals ‘sharply conscious of their historical entanglements’ and well able to manipulate the commercial marketplace.6 Yet, as Levenson notes, such miscomprehensions (views promulgated by modernism’s ambitious leading figures) persist and are endemic to traditional understandings of the movement. In fact, the widespread acceptance of such mythoi has resulted in what Mary Ann Gillies identifies in Henri Bergson and British Modernism as a ‘static view of modernism’, one she believes has dominated and attenuated ‘criticism for much of the middle years of this century’.7 In attempting to address this imbalance, Gillies calls for a reassessment of the period, one willing to challenge long-established assumptions about the period and unafraid to contest the modernists’ own accounts of their aims and practice. Gillies contends that such an approach will result in ‘markedly different accounts of the period’, revealing new narratives that will radically unsettle, yet ultimately augment and enrich our understanding of this era and its literature. In association with this effort, Gillies points to the case of Bergson, identifying the philosopher’s recent critical revival as an example of the value of this dynamic new approach. Seemingly condemned to obscurity in the wake of the world wars, widely effaced from the modernists’ own accounts of their work and outlooks, and eclipsed by the rising popularity of psychoanalysis, anti-idealism, existentialism and general post-war pessimism, the philosopher Henri Bergson is now increasingly recognised as an important, influential figure in early twentieth century culture. Thanks, in philosophy, to thinkers like Gillies Deleuze, P.A.Y. Gunter and John Mullarkey and Michael Levenson, Suzanne Guerlac, Paul 6 Levenson, Cambridge Companion to Modernism, 2. 7 Mary Ann Gillies, Henri Bergson and British Modernism (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996), 188. 3 Douglass and Mary Ann Gillies in literary studies (among many others), over the past thirty years Bergson’s thought has been increasingly explored and acknowledged as a significant factor in informing the modernists’ preoccupation with, and aesthetic innovations regarding, time, intuition, memory and subjectivity. Despite these developments, to date, such discussions have remained confined to canonical modernist writers, in particular T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Because of the specificity of this application Bergson has ironically become a figure whose thought, particularly that concerned with time and memory, has become so integral to discussions of modernist
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