itself to be symbolism. It uses all the tricks of the symbolism of
the collective-real, but to insist that it is individually, not
collectively real, that it is, therefore, not symbolic but literal,
not ‘artistic’ but natural. It is not selective, since if it were it
would admit itself to be symbolical, but makes everything it touches
equally significant, physical, real. Its technique is to insist on
the authentic quality of the symbol. This means that it is only a
more ambitious, expert, clever symbolism than the symbolism of the
collective-real. It is literally instead of suggestively symbolic. It
is morbidly physical instead of merely morbidly sentimental. It is
difficult (not by nature but by art), adult, aristocratic, _better_.
The difference between the collective-real and the individual-real
as revealed by their respective methods of symbolism proves itself
to be no more than a snobbish difference of degree: the art of the
individual-real is self-appointed good art. And as such it is
strained, unhappy-hypocritical, slave to an ideal of superiority that
I can only properly describe as the ideal of slickness. There is no
opposition here of right to wrong, only a more academic, individual
wrong (or real) than even the best democratic, collective wrong. The
right (the unreal) remains (as it should) categorically non-existent.[3]
I recall with pleasure an outrageous example of the vulgarity,
sentimentality, proficient badness of collective-real literature; a
novel by Rebecca West. It is a long time since I read it, and what
I can reproduce of it is from memory. I remember in particular one
passage, in which it was told how delightful it was to hold an egg in
the little hollow in the front of the neck, and in which baked potatoes
were charmingly mixed up with cirrus clouds. It was all so frankly
false, so enchantingly bad, so vulgarly poetical without the least
claim to being poetic, that it was impossible not to enjoy it and not
to find it good: one was being sold nothing that was not obvious.
After Rebecca West put Katherine Mansfield, a cross between the
collective-real and the individual-real, a perplexed effort, a vapour.
Then put the development of the individual-real, culminating in the
art of Virginia Woolf, in which nothing is thrown out since it admits
no unreal, in which poetry has no chance because the individual-real
itself is so poetic, in which one is sold poetry without being aware of
it; this super-symbolical, unsufferably slick alchemy that takes poetry
out of the unreal and turns it into the dainty extra-pink blood by
which reality is suffused with reality:
‘She looked up over her knitting and met the third stroke and it seemed
to her like her own eyes meeting her own eyes, searching as she alone
could search into her mind and her heart, purifying out of existence
that lie, any lie. She praised herself in praising the light, without
vanity, for she was stern, she was searching, she was beautiful like
that light. It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to
things, inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed
one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one;
felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at that long steady
light) as for oneself. There rose, and she looked and looked with her
needles suspended, there curled up off the floor of the mind, rose from
the lake of one’s being, a mist, a bride to meet her lover.’
I submit that this is _more wrong_ than Rebecca West’s writing
because it is better, slicker. It bends the bow of taste (to use the
manner of Mrs. Woolf) back into a contorted, disdainful, monotonous,
sensuously bulging circle. The collective-real, when a revolution
takes place in it (when it is threatened by the unreal and makes a
violent gesture of self-assertion), acknowledges the shadow that
has passed over it, accepts the consequences of pledging itself to
be with time: shortens its skirts, chops an inch off its hair, puts
a cheerful face on its modernity--its progressive retreat from the
unreal. The individual-real, on the other hand, secure in Nature’s
fortress, insists that no shadow of the unreal can fall upon it. It is
everything--real because it is individualistic, unreal because it is
symbolical: it cannot come to harm. If it is threatened, it lengthens
its skirts, swishes grandly along the ground, grows its fingernails,
scratches exquisitely the plaster wall that surrounds it, sharpens its
pencil till it has nerves and writes just a little more finely than is
possible. And whatever it touches turns to spun-silk under it. It is
the delamarish memory-fairy.
Yet certainly there is much that cannot, except in the fairy-tale
of memory (the individual-real) be turned into spun-silk. To make
everything real, no matter how unreal, how personal it may have been
in its occurrence, is to symbolize it for the democratic mass. Thus
psycho-analysis is not unacceptable to the individual-real, thus in
individual-real literature we find grating public exhibitions of
individuality. Any personal incident may be stroked, coaxed, maddened
by fine torture into symbolic existence. For example: when I was
fourteen I used to read the _New York Times_ every afternoon for an
hour (for a pittance) to an old man whose eyesight was poor, a veteran
of the Civil War. He had a most eccentric mispronunciation, which I
had to adopt in reading to him. It was very difficult, as on the other
side, at school, I was being trained in pronunciation. I concentrated
on mispronunciation, and one day, when I had just about become
expert in it, I knocked at his door to find that he had died. There
I was, with all that mispronunciation on my hands; and to a certain
extent it is still on my hands. Now, if I were a psycho-analytic
individual-realist, I should symbolically refine this. I should have
a mispronunciation complex, I should say that life was like that and
associate it with other incidents in which life was like that, I
should have a mental ejaculation every time I mispronounced, and so
on. As it is, it is merely an incident--what I may call a statistical
incident. It happened, I occasionally mispronounce, it is all very
personal, unreal, illogical, unsymbolical and poetic to me. I have
never told it, poetically, as a good story to illustrate this or that
or to mean this or that.[4] And in treating it in this way I am sure
I am closer to the incident as it happened and as it affected me,
though I am not closer to what is called the reality of the incident.
This is perhaps trivial and even irrelevant to the argument. Yet it is
to me an exposition in life of the always threatening danger of the
individual-real in literature and art.
§2
I have already said that I considered Herr Spengler wrong and Mr.
Lewis right. To say that Herr Spengler is wrong is to say that he is
wrong. To say that Mr. Lewis is right is to imply, because I place
his right side by side with Herr Spengler’s wrong, that I regret
the argumentative rightness of his right: I not only object to
Herr Spengler’s systematic wrongness because it is wrong, but also
because it is systematic. Herr Spengler perceives a conspiracy and
is delighted, Mr. Lewis perceives a conspiracy and is infuriated.
Therefore, though I admire Mr. Lewis because he is right, I restrict my
admiration in so far as he is systematic: the obsession with conspiracy
is no more wrong in Herr Spengler than in Mr. Lewis. I regret to see
Mr. Lewis decorating his right with the trappings of argument: I
regret to see him dramatizing his right realistically to impress the
same audience as Herr Spengler does--emphasizing the individual-real
as Spengler does the collective-real. I should like to see Mr. Lewis
being right, being unreal, being himself, rather than sending out his
right to instruct the democratic mass on the same stage on to which
Herr Spengler sends out his wrong. It is none of my business, of
course, what Mr. Lewis does with his right; but in admiring Mr. Lewis
and not admiring Herr Spengler it is only fair to point out that the
former as well as the latter is guilty of realistic projections.
By projections I mean saying more, thinking more, knowing more,
observing more, organizing more than is self. I mean creating the real.
In Herr Spengler’s writing I find nothing unreal; I find no self. In
Mr. Lewis’s writing I find a considerable unreal projecting itself
realistically, organizing itself against, for example, James Joyce. I
do not speak merely of attacking James Joyce or Sherwood Anderson or
D. H. Lawrence. I speak of attacking by advocating a system to take
the place of the system which certain aspects of James Joyce’s work,
say, represent to Mr. Lewis. I think this system should indeed be
attacked in so far as it is a system and in so far as is necessary for
a preservation of integrity. I do not think it should be replaced. I
want the time-world removed and in its place to see--nothing. I do not
want to see the unreal--Mr. Lewis’s, mine, anyone’s--become more than
itself, become either intellectual (Spengler) or physical (Lewis).
I want it to remain inhuman and obscure. Both Herr Spengler and Mr.
Lewis make it, the one in his wrongness, the other in his rightness,
human and glaring. To me the secularistic subjective softness of
the first is no more aggressively realistic than the secularistic
‘objective hardness’ of the second. For all Mr. Lewis’s unreal, the
question remains to him ‘whether we should set out to transcend our
human condition or whether we should translate into human terms the
whole of our datum.’ I agree with Mr. Lewis in discarding the first
alternative, but I submit that the second contains in it two other
alternatives and that in choosing the _wrong one_ of these (as he does
by creating the original pair of alternatives) Mr. Lewis leans towards
rather than away from transcendentalism. For what he calls the datum is
nothing but the unreal; to call it the datum and, further, to suggest
the necessity of its translation from the unreal into the real, the
personal (inhuman) into the human (physically collective) is only to
oppose one kind of transcendentalism to another--the individual-real
to the collective-real. In this he is identifying himself with critics
who, like I. A. R. Richards, wish to find a place for literature and
art ‘in the system of human endeavours,’ to prove the unreal to be but
‘a finer organization of ordinary experiences’; that is, in order to
combat the gross romanticism and rhodomontade of democratic realism,
he turns merely to a more classical, aristocratic realism.[5] He
thus reduces the difference between himself and Herr Spengler to a
difference in taste rather than in principle; the distinction between
right and wrong, unreal and real, which Mr. Lewis might be one of the
few people able to maintain, becomes, as has already been pointed out,
merely the distinction between good and bad, between two types of the
real or between degrees in the real.
Man, as he becomes more man, becomes less nature. He becomes unreal. He
loses homogeneity as a species. He lives unto himself not as a species
but as an individual. He is lost as far as nature is concerned, but as
he is separated from nature, this does not matter. He is in himself, he
is unreal, he is secure. This sense of unreality, however, varies in
individuals: it is weakest in the weakest individuals. These weakest
individuals, missing the physical homogeneity which reality in nature
would give man, construct by analogy an ideal homogeneity, a history,
a reality of time. ‘The means whereby to identify living forms,’
Spengler says, ‘is Analogy.’ As systematic analogy with nature becomes
more and more difficult, the basis of analogy, parallelism with
nature, is removed; but the system of analogy remains. A transference
is made from what Herr Spengler calls morphological equivalence to
functional equivalence. Instead of being nature-like (like the species
_man_ in nature) he becomes man-like (like the species man in man).
The individual is like himself collectively, really, not like himself
individually, unreally. It is now possible perhaps to discuss more
clearly the significance of the terms I have been using: pessimism,
optimism; collective-real, individual-real; unreal. Herr Spengler, I
should say, is pessimistic at the sight of the disintegration of man
as a natural species; he consoles himself with a vision of man as a
consistent analogous rather than homologous social mass. He has, we
might say, a melancholy, mystical vision of an eternal structure of
decay, whose processes may be collectively appreciated and participated
in. His vision is the collective-real, by which he manages to transcend
the unreal. Mr. Lewis, I should say, is fundamentally optimistic at
the sight of the disintegration of man as a natural species. He is
not distressed, I believe, by the fact that there is a problem of
individualism. He would face it cheerfully if he were not so annoyed
by Herr Spengler’s gloomy evasion of it--by the whole time-philosophy
for which Spengler is but one of many spokesmen. But he is distracted
from his pursuit of the problem of individualism into the unreal, where
is to be found its only satisfactory conclusion, by his annoyance
with evasions of it like Herr Spengler’s or Dr. Whitehead’s. And in
his annoyance he remains permanently distracted; he succeeds in doing
no more than substituting for it another kind of evasion. I do not
say that Mr. Lewis is an official spokesman of the individual-real
in the way in which Herr Spengler is an official spokesman for the
collective-real. But in opposing him without fully acknowledging the
unreal he seems to me to be identifying himself with a brand of realism
that is in its way as obnoxious as collective realism.
Let me elaborate what I consider to be the viewpoint of the
individual-realists. They perceive the disintegration of man as a
species and resent the philosophical substitute which the collective
realists, with the help of history, make for the natural species--this
analogical instead of homological species. They recognize that however
removed man may now be from nature, analogies of the individual with
natural history are less false than analogies of the individual with
human history. Analogies of the individual with nature will become
less and less exact as man becomes more and more removed from nature.
But it is at any rate true that these analogies will hold as long as
it will be possible to make them. Analogies of the individual with
history will, on the other hand, become more and more exact, since they
are invented rather than discovered analogies, analogies maintained
by a system of representational cohesion. Historical analogy thus
stands for the tyranny of democracy, while physical analogy stands
for a Toryish anarchy--the direct communication of a few individuals
with the physical world without the intervention of the symbolic
species.[6] I think that anarchism is very nice; but I do not think
that anarchism is enough. I agree that morphological analogy is more
literal than functional analogy; but as morphological analogy is bound
to become less and less exact as the individual’s memory of himself as
a member of a species becomes more and more shady, it seems to me idle
to maintain it at all (except humorously); especially idle to maintain
it, this individual-real, categorically against the collective-real,
and in doing so to lose sight of the only quality in which the
individual is secure, in a certain personal unreality not affected by
analogy of any kind. I am not much concerned about the philosophical
invalidity of the individual-real; I am ready to admit that it is
philosophically a more tenable position than the collective-real.
Philosophical positions have all to do with versions of the real, and
have varying degrees of tenability: but if a philosophical position
have the maximum degree of intelligibility it does not alter the fact
that any philosophical position is irrelevant to the individual and
relevant only to a symbolic mass of individuals. The only position
relevant to the individual is the unreal, and it is relevant because it
is not a position but the individual himself. The individual-real is
more indulgent of the individual-unreal than any other philosophical
position; but this is a disadvantage rather than advantage to the
unreal, since it actually means an encroachment upon, a parody of
the unreal by the individual-real. It is about this encroachment and
parody as it takes place in literature that I am really concerned.
To put it simply, the unreal is to me poetry. The individual-real is
a sensuous enactment of the unreal, opposing a sort of personally
cultivated physical collectivity to the metaphysical mass-cultivated
collectivity of the collective-real. So the individual-real is a
plagiarizing of the unreal which makes the opposition between itself
and the collective-real seem that of poetic to realistic instead of
(as it really is) that of superior to inferior realistic; the real,
personally guaranteed real-stuff to a philosophical, mass-magicked
real-stuff. The result in literature is a realistic poeticizing of
prose (Virginia Woolf or any ‘good’ writer) that competes with poetry,
forcing it to make itself more poetic if it would count at all. Thus
both the ‘best’ prose and the ‘best’ poetry are the most ‘poetic’;
and make the unreal, mere poetry, look obscure and shabby. And what
have we, of all this effort? Sitwellian connoisseurship in beauty and
fashion, adult Eliotry proving how individually realistic the childish,
mass-magicked real-stuff can be if sufficiently documented, ambitious
personal absolutes proving how real their unreal is, Steinian and
Einsteinian intercourse between history and science, Joycian release
of man of time in man of nature (collective-real in individual-real),
cultured primitivism, cultured individualism, vulgar (revolutionary)
collectivism, fastidious (anarchic) collectivism--it is all one:
nostalgic, lascivious, masculine, Oedipean embrace of the real
mother-body by the unreal son-mind.[7]
§3
In showing how the distinction between the collective-real and
the individual-real meant really no more than a difference of
degree--between degrees of good, for example--I might have carried the
argument further. I might have shown that in thus revealing themselves
as merely differences of degree, they reduced all oppositions that
might be made between them to differences of degree. Take the
opposition of _intellectual_, of the time-world (collective-real),
to _physical_, of the selves-world (individual-real): _intellectual_
proves itself to mean based on an emotionally maintained unity;
_physical_ proves itself to mean based on a unity maintained by reason.
The opposition then of _intellectual_ to _physical_ (of Herr Spengler,
say, to Mr. Lewis) or of intuition to intelligence (of John Middleton
Murry, say, to T. S. Eliot) is a restatement of the more hackneyed
opposition of _emotional_ to _intellectual_; which in turn proves
itself to be not an opposition at all but an expression of degrees of
historical advancement.
Thus to Herr Spengler ‘Soul,’ the felt self, is an eternal, romantic
youthfulness in man; which expresses itself by comparing itself
(analogy) continually with the world, the not-self, the unfelt self;
which is the permanently aged, self-apprehending, being self of nature.
Herr Spengler does not see that once having made this opposition he
has placed himself in the position of choosing between them, that one
or the other must represent the illusion of one or the other. Failing
to do this, by maintaining a communicative opposition between them, he
shows that both are illusions (mutually, one of the other). To compare
mathematics and logic is to show wherein both are false, by reason of
their resemblance to each other. If the likeness were true, it would be
a complete likeness, it would be identity, and one or the other must
disappear; and it follows that the one in whose terms the likeness is
stated is the most false, the most illusory. The likeness is maintained
by the self’s fear of self, the fear of personal loneliness. The
mathematical unity of the world sets an example for the historical
unity of the Soul, the time-child of the world; a community self, a
Culture, is invented to keep the self company. All the values by which
this self is organized are derivative values. ‘Logic is a kind of
mathematic.’ Language is an expression of functional relationships,
it is not just language, the tongue of a self; it must co-ordinate,
_express_ the members of the community self rather than _say_ each
self; it must be comprehensible, that is, it must show likeness--if
it does not show likeness it is attacked as obscure. A painter or a
composer or a sculptor is one who demonstrates, through his medium,
this communicative opposition between the world of reality and the
world of self. The poet is one who, by personal duplicity, takes it
upon himself to prove that the opposition is so and not so; his poetry
is a demonstration of the righteousness of duplicity. ‘Nature is to
be handled scientifically, History poetically.’ Self is poetic self.
Nature, mathematical life, is the become, the eternally grown-up;
History, logical life, is the becoming, the eternally childish.
The time-advocate, whom I shall call the philosopher, does not see, or
is afraid to see, that the become and the becoming are both mutually
illusory Worlds of reality: that they are self-created refutations
of individuality to which the individual succumbs from imperfection.
He forgets, that is, that the individual is an _unbecoming_ and that
the categories ‘becoming’ and ‘become’ are really a derivation from
him, a historical reconstruction. Unbecoming is the movement away
from reality, the becoming unreal. What is called the become is
therefore really the starting point of the unbecoming. What is called
the becoming is therefore really a hypothetical opposition to the
unbecoming. The become and the becoming are both oppositions to the
unbecoming; the become from which the becoming is derived is a static
order organized against the unbecoming, the become is the material of
disintegration. The becoming is an attempt to check the disintegration
of the become from real to unreal by reversing its direction, turning
it from real to more real, making Nature suggest History. This is done
by reading into Nature a necessity and inventing for the species man, a
digression from Nature, an analogical Darwinistic Nature. The necessity
of Nature is then called Causality, the necessity of History, Destiny.
The philosopher, then, is the formal opponent of the unreal. To him
the individual is a piece, Nature is a whole, and the individual
cannot match the wholeness, the real of Nature, except by sharing
in a community self, the collective-real. To one who recognizes the
reality of the unreal, each individual is a positive unit produced
by the disintegration of the reality of Nature. Nature is a process;
and the pieces of this process are the wholes, not Nature. To the
philosopher thought is a reintegration of the scattered pieces into
a symbolic whole, which may then be related to the literal whole of
Nature; it also brings about a close interrelation of these pieces
among themselves, a functional conformity. To a believer in the unreal,
thought confirms disintegration. It is not a collective system. It is
each self.