material things have a _form_ of sentience, even the inorganic: surely
they all exist in some subtle and complicated tension of vibration which
makes them sensitive to external influence and causes them to have an
influence on other external objects, irrespective of contact. It is of
this vibration or inorganic consciousness that Poe is master: the
sleep-consciousness. Thus Roderick Usher was convinced that his whole
surroundings, the stones of the house, the fungi, the water in the tarn,
the very reflected image of the whole, was woven into a physical oneness
with the family, condensed, as it were, into one atmosphere--the special
atmosphere in which alone the Ushers could live. And it was this
atmosphere which had moulded the destinies of his family.
But while ever the soul remains alive, it is the moulder and not the
moulded. It is the souls of living men that subtly impregnate stones,
houses, mountains, continents, and give these their subtlest form.
People only become subject to stones after having lost their integral
souls.
In the human realm, Roderick had one connection: his sister Madeline.
She, too, was dying of a mysterious disorder, nervous, cataleptic. The
brother and sister loved each other passionately and exclusively. They
were twins, almost identical in looks. It was the same absorbing love
between them, this process of unison in nerve-vibration, resulting in
more and more extreme exaltation and a sort of consciousness, and a
gradual break-down into death. The exquisitely sensitive Roger,
vibrating without resistance with his sister Madeline, more and more
exquisitely, and gradually devouring her, sucking her life like a
vampire in his anguish of extreme love. And she asking to be sucked.
Madeline died and was carried down by her brother into the deep vaults
of the house. But she was not dead. Her brother roamed about in
incipient madness--a madness of unspeakable terror and guilt. After
eight days they were suddenly startled by a clash of metal, then a
distinct, hollow metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled,
reverberation. Then Roderick Usher, gibbering, began to express himself:
"_We have put her living into the tomb!_ Said I not that my senses were
acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the
hollow coffin. I heard them--many, many days ago--yet I dared not--_I
dared not speak._"
It is the same old theme of "each man kills the thing he loves." He knew
his love had killed her. He knew she died at last, like Ligeia,
unwilling and unappeased. So, she rose again upon him. "But then without
those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the Lady
Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the
evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated
frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon
the threshold, then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon
the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final
death-agonies bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the
terrors he had anticipated."
It is lurid and melodramatic, but it is true. It is a ghastly
psychological truth of what happens in the last stages of this beloved
love, which cannot be separate, cannot be isolate, cannot listen in
isolation to the isolate Holy Ghost. For it is the Holy Ghost we must
live by. The next era is the era of the Holy Ghost. And the Holy Ghost
speaks individually inside each individual: always, for ever a ghost.
There is no manifestation to the general world. Each isolate individual
listening in isolation to the Holy Ghost within him.
The Ushers, brother and sister, betrayed the Holy Ghost in themselves.
They would love, love, love, without resistance. They would love, they
would merge, they would be as one thing. So they dragged each other down
into death. For the Holy Ghost says you must _not_ be as one thing with
another being. Each must abide by itself, and correspond only within
certain limits.
The best tales all have the same burden. Hate is as inordinate as love,
and as slowly consuming, as secret, as underground, as subtle. All this
that which takes place _beneath_ the consciousness, underground vault
business in Poe only symbolizes On top, all is fair-spoken. Beneath,
there is awful murderous extremity of burying alive. Fortunato, in _The
Cask of Amontillado_, is buried alive out of perfect hatred, as the Lady
Madeline of Usher is buried alive out of love. The lust of hate is the
inordinate desire to consume and unspeakably possess the soul of the
hated one, just as the lust of love is the desire to possess, or to be
possessed by, the beloved, utterly. But in either case the result is the
dissolution of both souls, each losing itself in transgressing its own
bounds.
The lust of Montresor is to devour utterly the soul of Fortunato. It
would be no use killing him outright. If a man is killed outright his
soul remains integral, free to return into the bosom of some beloved,
where it can enact itself. In walling-up his enemy in the vault,
Montresor seeks to bring about the indescribable capitulation of the
man's soul, so that he, the victor, can possess himself of the very
being of the vanquished. Perhaps this can actually be done. Perhaps, in
the attempt, the victor breaks the bonds of his own identity, and
collapses into nothingness, or into the infinite. Becomes a monster.
What holds good for inordinate hate holds good for inordinate love. The
motto, _Nemo me impune lacessit_, might just as well be _Nemo me impune
amat._
In William Wilson we are given a rather unsubtle account of the attempt
of a man to kill his own soul. William Wilson, the mechanical, lustful
ego succeeds in killing William Wilson, the living self. The lustful ego
lives on, gradually reducing itself towards the dust of the infinite.
In the _Murders in the Rue Morgue_ and _The Gold Bug_ we have those
mechanical tales where the interest lies in the following out of a
subtle chain of cause and effect. The interest is scientific rather than
artistic, a study in psychologic reactions.
The fascination of murder itself is curious. Murder is not just killing.
Murder is a lust to get at the very quick of life itself, and kill
it-hence the stealth and the frequent morbid dismemberment of the
corpse, the attempt to get at the very quick of the murdered being, to
find the quick and to possess it. It is curious that the two men
fascinated by the art of murder, though in different ways, should have
been De Quincey and Poe, men so different in ways of life, yet perhaps
not so widely different in nature. In each of them is traceable that
strange lust for extreme love and extreme hate, possession by mystic
violence of the other soul, or violent deathly surrender of the soul in
the self: an absence of manly virtue, which stands alone and accepts
limits.
Inquisition and torture are akin to murder: the same lust. It is a
combat between inquisitor and victim as to whether the inquisitor shall
get at the quick of life itself, and pierce it. Pierce the very quick of
the soul. The evil will of man tries to do this. The brave soul of man
refuses to have the life-quick pierced in him. It is strange: but just
as the thwarted will can persist evilly, after death, so can the brave
spirit preserve, even through torture and death, the quick of life and
truth. Nowadays society is evil. It finds subtle ways of torture, to
destroy the life-quick, to get at the life-quick in a man. Every
possible form. And still a man can hold out, if he can laugh and listen
to the Holy Ghost.--But society is evil, evil, and love is evil. And
evil breeds evil, more and more.
So the mystery goes on. La Bruyère says that all our human
unhappinesses _viennent de ne voir être seuls._ As long as man lives he
will be subject to the yearning of love or the burning of hate, which is
only inverted love.
But he is subject to something more than this. If we do not live to eat,
we do not live to love either.
We live to stand alone, and listen to the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost,
who is inside us, and who is many gods. Many gods come and go, some say
one thing and some say another, and we have to obey the God of the
innermost hour. It is the multiplicity of gods within us make up the
Holy Ghost.
But Poe knew only love, love, love, intense vibrations and heightened
consciousness. Drugs, women, self-destruction, but anyhow the prismatic
ecstasy of heightened consciousness and sense of love, of flow. The
human soul in him was beside itself. But it was not lost. He told us
plainly how it was, so that we should know.
He was an adventurer into vaults and cellars and horrible underground
passages of the human soul. He sounded the horror and the warning of his
own doom.
Doomed he was. He died wanting more love, and love killed him. A ghastly
disease, love. Poe telling us of his disease: trying even to make his
disease fair and attractive. Even succeeding.
Which is the inevitable falseness, duplicity of art, American Art in
particular.
VII. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND "THE SCARLET LETTER"
Nathaniel Hawthorne writes romance.
And what's romance? Usually, a nice little tale where you have
everything As You Like It, where rain never wets your jacket and gnats
never bite your nose and its always daisy-time. _As You Like It_ and
_Forest Lovers_, etc. _Morte D'Arthur._
Hawthorne obviously isn't this kind of romanticist: though nobody has
muddy boots in the _Scarlet Letter_, either.
But there is more to it. _The Scarlet Letter_ isn't a pleasant, pretty
romance. It is a sort of parable, an earthly story with a hellish
meaning.
All the time there is this split in the American art and
art-consciousness. On the top it is as nice as pie, goody-goody and
lovey-dovey. Like Hawthorne being such a blue-eyed darling, in life, and
Longfellow and the rest such sucking doves. Hawthorne's wife said she
"never saw him in time" which doesn't mean she saw him too late. But
always in the "frail effulgence of eternity."
Serpents they were. Look at the inner meaning of their art and see what
demons they were.
You _must_ look through the surface of American art, and see the inner
diabolism of the symbolic meaning. Otherwise it is all mere
childishness.
That blue-eyed darling Nathaniel knew disagreeable things in his inner
soul. He was careful to send them out in disguise.
Always the same. The deliberate consciousness of Americans so fair and
smooth-spoken, and the under-consciousness so devilish. _Destroy!
destroy! destroy!_ hums the under-consciousness. _Love and produce! Love
and produce!_ cackles the upper consciousness. And the world hears only
the Love-and-produce cackle. Refuses to hear the hum of destruction
underneath. Until such time as it will _have_ to hear.
The American has got to destroy. It is his destiny. It is his destiny to
destroy the whole corpus of the white psyche, the white consciousness.
And he's got to do it secretly. As the growing of a dragon-fly inside a
chrysalis or cocoon destroys the larva grub, secretly.
Though many a dragon-fly never gets out of the chrysalis case: dies
inside. As America might.
So the secret chrysalis of _The Scarlet Letter_, diabolically destroying
the old psyche inside.
_Be good! Be good!_ warbles Nathaniel. _Be good, and never sin! Be sure
your sins will find you out._
So convincingly that his wife never saw him "as in time."
Then listen to the diabolic undertone of _The Scarlet Letter._
Man ate of the tree of knowledge, and became ashamed of himself.
Do you imagine Adam had never lived with Eve before that apple episode?
Yes, he had. As a wild animal with his mate.
It didn't become "sin" till the knowledge-poison entered. That apple of
Sodom.
We are divided in ourselves, against ourselves. And that is the meaning
of the cross symbol.
In the first place, Adam knew Eve as a wild animal knows its mate,
momentaneously, but vitally, in blood-knowledge. Blood-knowledge, not
mind-knowledge. Blood-knowledge, that seems utterly to forget, but
doesn't. Blood-knowledge, instinct, intuition, all the vast vital flux
of knowing that goes on in the dark, antecedent to the mind.
Then came that beastly apple, and the other sort of knowledge started.
Adam began to look at himself. "My hat!" he said. "What's this? My Lord!
What the deuce!--And Eve! I wonder about Eve."
Thus starts KNOWING. Which shortly runs to UNDERSTANDING, when the devil
gets his own.
When Adam went and took Eve, _after_ the apple, he didn't do any more
than he had done many a time before, in act. But in consciousness he did
something very different. So did Eve. Each of them kept an eye on what
they were doing, they watched what was happening to them. They wanted to
KNOW. And that was the birth of sin. Not _doing_ it, but KNOWING about
it. Before the apple, they had shut their eyes and their minds had gone
dark. Now, they peeped and pried and imagined. They watched themselves.
And they felt uncomfortable after. They felt self-conscious. So they
said, "The _act_ is sin. Let's hide. We've sinned."
No wonder the Lord kicked them out of the Garden. Dirty hypocrites.
The sin was the self-watching, self-consciousness. The sin, and the
doom. Dirty understanding.
Nowadays men do hate the idea of dualism. It's no good, dual we are. The
Cross. If we accept the symbol, then, virtually, we accept the fact. We
are divided against ourselves.
For instance, the blood _hates_ being KNOWN by the mind. It feels itself
destroyed when it is KNOWN. Hence the profound instinct of privacy.
And on the other hand, the mind and the spiritual consciousness of man
simply _hates_ the dark potency of blood-acts: hates the genuine dark
sensual orgasms, which do, for the time being, actually obliterate the
mind and the spiritual consciousness, plunge them in a suffocating flood
of darkness.
You can't get away from this.
Blood-consciousness overwhelms, obliterates, and annuls
mind-consciousness.
Mind-consciousness extinguishes blood-consciousness, and consumes the
blood.
We are all of us conscious in both ways. And the two ways are
antagonistic in us.
They will always remain so.
That is our cross.
The antagonism is so obvious, and so far-reaching, that it extends to
the smallest thing. The cultured, highly-conscious person of to-day
_loathes_ any form of physical, "menial" work: such as washing dishes or
sweeping a floor or chopping wood. This menial work is an insult to the
spirit. "When I see men carrying heavy loads, doing brutal work, it
always makes me want to cry," said a beautiful, cultured woman to me.
"When you say that, it makes me want to beat you," said I, in reply.
"When I see you with your beautiful head pondering heavy thoughts, I
just want to hit you. It outrages me."
My father hated books, hated the sight of anyone reading or writing.
My mother hated the thought that any of her sons should be condemned to
manual labour. Her sons must have something higher than that.
She won. But she died first.
He laughs longest who laughs last.
There is a basic hostility in all of us between the physical and the
mental, the blood and the spirit. The mind is "ashamed" of the blood.
And the blood is destroyed by the mind, actually. Hence pale-faces.
At present the mind-consciousness and the so-called spirit triumphs. In
America supremely. In America, nobody does anything from the blood.
Always from the nerves, if not from the mind. The blood is chemically
reduced by the nerves, in American activity.
When an Italian labourer labours, his mind and nerves sleep, his blood
acts ponderously.
Americans, when they are _doing_ things, never seem really to be doing
them. They are "busy about" it. They are always busy "about" something.
But truly _immersed_ in _doing_ something, with the deep
blood-consciousness active, that they never are.
They _admire_ the blood-conscious spontaneity. And they want to get it
in their heads. "Live from the body," they shriek. It is their last
mental shriek. _Co-ordinate._
It is a further attempt still to rationalize the body and blood. "Think
about such and such a muscle," they say, "and relax there."
And every time you "conquer" the body with the mind (you can say "heal"
it, if you like) you cause a deeper, more dangerous complex or tension
somewhere else.
Ghastly Americans, with their blood no longer blood. A yellow spiritual
fluid.
The Fall.
There have been lots of Falls.
We fell into _knowledge_ when Eve bit the apple. Self-conscious
knowledge. For the first time the mind put up a fight against the blood.
Wanting to UNDERSTAND. That is to intellectualize the blood.
The blood must be _shed_, says Jesus.
Shed on the cross of our own divided psyche.
Shed the blood, and you become mind-conscious. Eat the body and drink
the blood, self-cannibalizing, and you become extremely conscious, like
Americans and some Hindus. Devour yourself, and God knows what a lot
you'll know, what a lot you'll be conscious of.
Mind you don't choke yourself.
For a long time men believed that they could be perfected through the
mind, through the spirit. They believed, passionately. They had their
ecstasy in pure consciousness. They _believed_ in purity, chastity, and
the wings of the spirit.
America soon plucked the bird of the spirit. America soon killed the
_belief_ in the spirit. But not the practice. The practice continued
with a sarcastic vehemence. America, with a perfect inner contempt for
the spirit and the consciousness of man, practises the same spirituality
and universal love and KNOWING all the time, incessantly, like a drug
habit. And inwardly gives not a fig for it. Only for the sensation. The
pretty-pretty _sensation_ of love, loving all the world. And the nice
fluttering aeroplane _sensation_ of knowing, knowing, knowing. Then the
prettiest of all sensations, the sensation of UNDERSTANDING. Oh, what a
lot they understand, the darlings! _So_ good at the trick, they are.
Just a trick of self-conceit.
_The Scarlet Letter_ gives the show away.
You have your pure-pure young parson Dimmesdale.
You have the beautiful Puritan Hester at his feet.
And the first thing she does is to seduce him.
And the first thing he does is to be seduced.
And the second thing they do is to hug their sin in secret, and gloat
over it, and try to understand.
Which is the myth of New England.
Deerslayer refused to be seduced by Judith Hutter. At least the Sodom
apple of sin didn't fetch him.
But Dimmesdale was seduced gloatingly. Oh, luscious Sin!
He was such a pure young man.
That he had to make a fool of purity.
The American psyche.
Of course the best part of the game lay in keeping up pure appearances.
The greatest triumph a woman can Have, especially an American woman, is
the triumph of seducing a man: especially if he is pure.
And he gets the greatest thrill of all, in falling.--"Seduce me, Mrs.
Hercules."
And the pair of them share the subtlest delight in keeping up pure
appearances, when everybody knows all the while. But the power of pure
appearances is something to exult in. All America gives in to it. _Look_
pure!
To seduce a man. To have everybody know. To keep up appearances of
purity. Pure!
This is the great triumph, of woman.
_A._ The Scarlet Letter. Adulteress! The great Alpha. Alpha! Adulteress!
The new Adam and Adama! American!
_A._ Adulteress! Stitched with gold thread, glittering upon the bosom.
The proudest insignia.
Put her upon the scaffold and worship her there. Worship her there. The
Woman, the Magna Mater. _A._ Adulteress! Abel!
Abel! Abel! Abel! Admirable!
It becomes a farce.
The fiery heart. _A._ Mary of the Bleeding Heart. Mater Adolerata! _A._
Capital _A._ Adulteress. Glittering with gold thread. Abel! Adultery.
Admirable!
It is, perhaps, the most colossal satire ever penned. _The Scarlet
Letter._ And by a blue-eyed darling of a Nathaniel.
Not Bumppo, however.
The human spirit, fixed in a lie, adhering to a lie, giving itself
perpetually the lie.
All begins with _A._
Adultress. Alpha. Abel, Adam. _A._ America.
_The Scarlet Letter._
"Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen
in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with
the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine
Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another
to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by
contrast, of that sacred image of sinless Motherhood, whose infant was
to redeem the world."
Whose infant was to redeem the world indeed! It will be a startling
redemption the world will get from the American infant.
"Here was a taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human
life, working such effect that the world was only the darker for this
woman's beauty, and more lost for the infant she had borne."
Just listen to the darling. Isn't he a master of apology?
Of symbols, too.
His pious blame is a chuckle of praise all the while.
Oh, Hester, you are a demon. A man _must_ be pure, just that you can
seduce him to a fall. Because the greatest thrill in life is to bring
down the Sacred Saint with a flop into the mud. Then when you've brought
him down, humbly wipe off the mud with your hair, another Magdalen. And
then go home and dance a witch's jig of triumph, and stitch yourself a
Scarlet Letter with gold thread, as duchesses used to stitch themselves
coronets. And then stand meek on the scaffold and fool the world. Who
will all be envying you your sin, and beating you because you've stolen
an advantage over them.
Hester Prynne is the great nemesis of woman. She is the KNOWING Ligeia
risen diabolic from the grave. Having her own back. UNDERSTANDING.
This time it is Mr. Dimmesdale who dies. She lives on and is Abel.
His spiritual love was a lie. And prostituting the woman to his
spiritual love, as popular clergymen do, in his preachings and
loftiness, was a tall white lie. Which came flop.
We are so pure in spirit. Hi-tiddly-i-ty!
Till she tickled him in the right place, and he fell.
Flop.
Flop goes spiritual love.
But keep up the game. Keep up appearances. Pure are the pure. To the
pure all things, etc.
Look out, Mister, for the Female Devotee. Whatever you do, don't let her
start tickling you. She knows your weak spot. Mind your Purity.
When Hester Prynne seduced Arthur Dimmesdale it was the beginning of the
end. But from the beginning of the end to the end of the end is a
hundred years or two.
Mr. Dimmesdale also wasn't at the end of his resources. Previously, he
had lived by governing his body, ruling it, in the interests of his
spirit. Now he has a good time all by himself torturing his body,
whipping it, piercing it with thorns, macerating himself. It's a form of
masturbation. He wants to get a mental grip on his body. And since he
can't quite manage it with the mind, witness his fall--he will give it
what for, with whips. His will shall _lash_ his body. And he enjoys his
pains. Wallows in them. To the pure all things are pure.
It is the old self-mutilation process, gone rotten. The mind wanting to
get its teeth in the blood and flesh. The ego exulting in the tortures
of the mutinous flesh. I, the ego, I _will_ triumph over my own flesh.
Lash! Lash! I am a grand free spirit _Lash!_ I am the master of my soul!
_Lash! Lash!_ I am the captain of my soul. _Lash!_ Hurray! "In the fell
clutch of circumstance," etc., etc.
Good-bye Arthur. He depended on women for his Spiritual Devotees,
spiritual brides. So, the woman just touched him in his weak spot, his
Achilles Heel of the flesh. Look out for the spiritual bride. She's
after the weak spot.
It is the battle of wills.
"For the will therein lieth, which dieth not--"
The Scarlet Woman becomes a Sister of Mercy. Didn't she just, in the
late war. Oh, Prophet Nathaniel!
Hester urges Dimmesdale to go away with her, to a new country, to a new
life. He isn't having any.
He knows there is no new country, no new life on the globe to-day. It is
the same old thing, in different degrees, everywhere. _Plus ça change,
plus c'est la même chose._
Hester thinks, with Dimmesdale for her husband, and Pearl for her child,
in Australia, maybe, she'd have been perfect.
But she wouldn't. Dimmesdale had already fallen from his integrity as a
minister of the Gospel of the Spirit. He had lost his manliness. He
didn't see the point of just leaving himself between the hands of a
woman, and going away to a "new country," to be her thing entirely.
She'd only have despised him more, as every woman despises a man who has
"fallen" to her: despises him with her tenderest lust.
He stood for nothing any more. So let him stay where he was and dree out
his weird.