Rhythm in the decorative poetic sense in which it is generally used
is, I believe, a strictly prose property. Prose is an inclusive medium,
its merit depends on its fullness. The more rich in illustration,
detail, rhythmic intricacies it is, the better prose it is, the more
effective as an instrument of synthesis. It is poetry, on the other
hand, which is properly harsh, bare, matter-of-fact. Punctuation, the
notation of rhythm, is essentially a prose development, a means of
managing the intricate language-flow. Prose is the social, civilized
instrument of communication. The restraints put on it are like the
complicated conventions that govern an apparently free-and-easy but
actually rigidly prescribed drawing-room atmosphere.
The purpose of poetry is to destroy all that prose formally represents.
It is an exclusive medium, and its merit depends on the economy with
which it can remove the social rhythmic clutter of communicative
language. The savage _tom-tom_ is poetry of a brutally specialized
kind used to eliminate everything in the listeners but the purpose
with which it has been argumentatively overloaded. Non-purposive
poetry has all the eliminating force of the _tom-tom_ without the
grotesque effects of special pleading. A suppression of all associative
obligations that might hinder analysis takes place in the poet: by
this narrowness he is free as by the synthetic broadness of prose
the prose-writer is bound. And it is this narrowness that is the only
rhythm proper to poetry. Metre is an attempt to soften the economy
and narrowness requisite in poetry; and it is likely to cause, and in
the main has caused, only a more fancy, mannered prose than prose; to
misrepresent the nature of restraint and limitation in poetry. The end
of poetry is to leave everything as pure and bare as possible after
its operation. It is therefore important that its tools of destruction
should be as frugal, economical as possible. When the destruction
or analysis is accomplished they shall have to account for their
necessity; they are the survivors, the result as well as the means of
the elimination. They are the pure residue, and the meaning if there
is any; and they vary in each poem only according to the amount of
destruction they have done and the clutter with which they began. The
greater the clutter attacked and the smaller, the purer, the residue to
which it is reduced (the more destructive the tools), the better the
poem.
Rhythm in poetry is therefore a deadly hammer, hammer away in
which each word demonstrates its necessity and in which each word
is accented. In prose there is accenting, then a long period of
relaxation, the harshness of the important words is absorbed in the
unimportant words: it is rhythmic. Prose is skilful manipulation
of the whole standing vocabulary, and a great deal of poetry merely
competes with prose in vocabularistic manipulation. Poetry is a
selection of a few words from this inert mass, which justify, quicken
themselves, in its destruction. The abruptness of poetry, commonly
softened into prosaic musicalness, is due to the implied omission at
every point of rhythmic prose language. Poetry is narrow (like the poem
on the page), broken, quick; prose is broad, rhythmic, slow. Poetry is
personal, prosaic. Prose is social, dressed out in verbal amenities,
poetic.
8
As to the application of the kind of point of view that I have outlined
to an individual’s relations with his fellows and, beyond that, to
the relations of a poem with reality. As to fellows: the unsocial,
ascetic concentration of self on self, the analytic intensification
of personality to a state of unreality, makes personality a pure,
not diffuse, a restrained and completely private activity. Where
personality was of this nature, all synthetic, public, real life
would be impersonal and formal--it would have manners for the sake of
communicative ease, not for the sake of concealing or discovering,
or suppressing or standardizing personality. Real life, I mean, as
an abstract, general life would be happier so than as a concrete
synthesis of personalities. It would not be a source of physical
nourishment for personality. The unreal person would not feed on or be
absorbed in the pattern; he would sharpen and try his asceticism in
it. A view of this kind, making society an artificial pattern based
on accident instead of a ‘real’ pattern based on necessity, is the
only possible clue to the reconciliation of freedom and formality.
To attempt to discover and form personality in the social pattern
is to make social life dull, vulgar and aggressive, and life with
self, dull, morbid and trivial. To treat social life as an impersonal
pattern is to give it the theatrical vitality of humour and to make
life with self strong and serious. The social problem is for each
individual how to reach the proper degree of humorous formality in
his communicative language, his clothes, his home; not how to acquire
a vicarious personal life which has no content but a gross synthetic
personality-desire. Social life (life with others) as opposed to
personal life (life with self) should be as dancing opposed to
walking--formal meaningless gesture as opposed to eccentric significant
character. Certain strictly social arts such as music would become
immediately tolerable and desirable if treated as arts of gesture
rather than of character.
Now as to poems and reality. A poem is an advanced degree of self, as
reality is an advanced degree of social life. The poem dances the
dance of reality, but with such perfect artificiality that the dance,
from very perfection, cancels itself and leaves, as far as reality is
concerned, Nothing. But as far as the poem is concerned, Nothing is
a dancer walking the ruins; character, by the ascetic nature of its
energy, surviving gesture. This asceticism is the creative formality of
the poem. Its critical formality is its original deadly participation
in the dance. Where we find no critical formality the poem represents
diffusion of self in the literary, synthetic self of reality;
wantonness of gesture; sentimental corruption of character; tedious
extension of reality beyond decent limits of sociality; instead of the
dance, an orgy of improprieties. Where we find only critical formality,
there is the same moral laxity, but concealed under a squeamish
disciplinary veneer; the difference between ‘romantic’ and ‘classical,’
merely.
9
Mr. Lewis’s ambitious offensive against wrongness makes a nice point
of conclusion, as it made a nice starting-point, for this exercise.
Most of Mr. Lewis’s confusions are due to his attempt to correlate his
political system with his taste. His political system is consistent
with itself; we agree with it unreservedly or we agree with it not at
all. His taste is inconsistent with itself wherever it has been made
to conform with his political system: it becomes a nagging, expedient
right, lacking the proper indifference of taste and the proper
consistency of a political attitude. It is therefore obviously futile
to treat with Mr. Lewis on matters of taste; while, on the other hand,
it may be helpful to consider certain clear features of his political
system.
(_a_) To the popularist progress is socially continuous; culture
is the large-scale, accumulative participation of everyman in
progress; conduct is behaviourism, perfect social automatism.
To the individualist progress is political rather than
social--aristocratically hereditary through that bluest blood, Reason;
culture is eclectic, conduct is anarchistic, the perfection of the
individualism of the few who are in this system responsible for the
social conformity of the rest. They differ in their opinion of the size
of a potent political group: the former believes that the entire social
group may form the political group, the latter that the political group
is an independent minority representative of the social group. But both
support the idea of a progressive tradition; to the one it is mystical
and collective, to the other rationally and personally maintained.
And to both the idea of a non-social self outside the tradition and
without reference to a cultural line of succession (a self, rather,
‘beginning again and again and again’) would be equally foreign and
repulsive. Mr. Lewis’s concrete, ‘stable’ person is only an upper-class
version of the hysterical, hypnotic, mass social self--more realistic,
steady, decorous, common-sensible. The suppression of individual will
by mass-will of which Mr. Lewis complains refers only to checks on
political opportunism: what he is really interested in is power not
individuality. He appreciates the fact that sociality means loss of
personal consciousness. His solution is that the few strong individuals
who object to loss of consciousness should benefit by an anarchistic
dispensation that leaves them their consciousness intact in order that
they may politically administer sociality to the unconscious.
(_b_) Mr. Lewis’s individualistic compromises come from his
unwillingness to face the dualistic character of the individual--his
real, social effect, his unreal, more-than-anarchistic self-subtraction
from the social group for purposes of identity. For various reasons
Mr. Lewis has not been able to shake himself free of the academic,
philosophical force of the language that he uses; the problem is in
any case too fine for his rough argumentative methods. He would have
first to overcome his prejudice against dualistic concepts arising
from their shady association with romantic ventures in philosophy, a
task of patience not in harmony with his temperament. In any case,
his political sense is too strong, too orthodox, to permit of his
admitting that the identity of the individual may be established
outside the social group. We may find the clue to his dogmatism in this
respect in the accent of philosophical awe with which he pronounces
‘reality.’ Reality’s the thing; the individual is only (in a few
individuals specializing in individualism) an honourable second. Even
unreality may not be a thing by itself: it is (and this seems to be
Mr. Lewis’s general conclusion) the queer slant at which reality is
seen. To say that reality is unreal, from Mr. Lewis’s viewpoint, is
like saying that sugar is sweet: the queer slant is in reality, not in
the individual, as the sweetness is in the sugar, not in the tongue.
‘Unreal’ is in this usage merely a more philosophic-sounding word
than ‘pretty,’ ‘spiritual,’ ‘mysterious’ or ‘queer.’ ‘The reality,’
Mr. Lewis complains, ‘has definitely installed itself inside the
contemporary mind’--it has become what I have called the fairy-tale
of the collective-real. Mr. Lewis, that is, is more interested in the
prestige of reality than in the general integrity of the individual
mind. His implication being that if the contemporary mind had
definitely installed itself in ‘the reality’ all would be well. We
should have a social group psycho-physically imbedded in reality, the
individual consciousness being in this case the fairy-tale--with a
few independent individual consciousnesses wagging themselves wisely
and anarchistically in political appreciation of the situation.
Farther than this Mr. Lewis is unable to go. He contents himself
with establishing the concreteness, the social security of the
wiseacres. His brand of individualism depends on the social setting for
authentication; he does not dare to separate the fact of individuality
from the fact of sociality and reveal how they maintain themselves
in one person through a contradiction, not through ‘reason.’ The
contradiction is difficult to grasp, as is the dualism from which it
proceeds, and difficult to persevere in clearly and equitably once it
is grasped; demanding infinite precision and much active distress and
conferring few brilliant occasions on those who do grasp it. And Mr.
Lewis’s brand of individualism is more immediately ambitious, more
impatient, more realistic. He does not trust himself to wait upon
successes or brilliant occasions. He skilfully glozes over the fine
distinctions, makes politic compromises with the reality sufficient
to assure the more astute members of the social group of a few ready
individualistic privileges, and sneers down with aristocratic scorn the
political idealism of the mob. He is willing to go all the way back to
wipe out the effects of historical romancing; he is unwilling to come
all the way forward again and risk doing the job thoroughly (the job,
that is, of thinking through to the fine distinctions), as it might be
now done. And so he remains, for all his intellectual swagger, a mere
reactionary and anarchist. Another hero who, having fought just hard
enough to permit him to celebrate a triumph, but not hard enough to
force a conclusive battle, has claimed his laurels in Rome and retired
to live upon them; the fine distinctions still untaken. ‘For the former
generals, as soon as they believed their exploits had entitled them
to the honour of triumphal distinctions, always abandoned the enemy.
Insomuch that there were already in Rome three statues adorned with
laurel; but still Tacfarinas was ravaging Africa....’
(_c_) Mr. Lewis’s world of reality is what we see plus what we know:
what we know is the queer slant in what we see, not the queer slant
in us. Our knowledge is the poetic touch in reality. The world of
reality for the collective-real is what we see, alone; the fact
itself of reality is poetic. But the differences are fundamentally
slight. Knowing is the individualistic comprehension of seeing;
conscious, literal perception versus crude, mystical mass-sensation;
private ownership of reality versus the vulgar, public, figurative
participation in reality of the impoverished working-class mob--that
is, anarchistic, personal seizure of reality made possible by the
philosophical vagueness of the mob. (For example, Mr. Lewis could
not argue his position either with success or impunity in Russia.) I
repeat, then, that the differences between the collective-real and the
individual-real are fundamentally slight. Both defer to the snobbism
of reality: it is reality and not the individual that matters. And
both are poetic, a sentimental fusion of two contradictory categories,
a wilful blurring by the intelligence of the dualism upon which it is
based. Both, for example, have difficulty in defining ‘the object,’ due
to their unwillingness to admit this duality; so that the same fusion
and blurring that takes place in the individual takes place in the
object as well. The romantic inwardness of the one inflates its faults
and delusions to a degree of obviousness that invites and facilitates
attack. The common-sense outwardness of the other is more aggressive,
but more discreet, hiding under its well-bred anarchism and upper-class
self-deprecation an enormous greed of possession. The one is childishly
content with a fairy-tale of possession; the other insists haughtily
upon a true story. But for both the problem, whether as seeing or
seeing and knowing, is essentially the same: to have or not to have. As
for being, it is not a proper poetic, not a proper philosophical and
therefore not a proper political question, and therefore out of order.
(_d_) The evasion of both of these two systems of the dualism that
I have attempted to suggest without romantic prejudice is reflected
in their respective treatment of time and space. Recognizing the
antinomy of time and space, they dismiss the possibility of enforcing
it practically as too frightening: if what is is made to be what is,
then we have nothing but what is; we cannot fool ourselves; therefore
evasion and philosophy. The antinomian pie is cut. Mr. Lewis’s side
takes space; the other side takes time; and both sides now devote their
energies to proving that each has the better piece. And certainly
both have very good pieces. In space occurs a disintegration that
may prove space, through its particulars; in time, an assemblage of
particulars that need not however develop particularity, but merely
prove time, through the standardizing of its particulars. Good pieces.
But only pieces. Space suffering from excessive definiteness; time
from excessive indefiniteness. Each trying to pretend it is the whole
pie, but each remaining just a self-infatuated piece. Space-synthesis,
time-synthesis--philosophical impostures with different political
methods, one conservative, old-fashioned, the other revolutionary,
modernist. Time a sort of negative space, space a sort of positive
time. Space-ist philosophy belied by its individualism, time-ist
philosophy by its generalism. To the time-men the wholeness, the
reality, is administered by a democratic Self; a Self not sufficiently
self-ish, nothing-ish, unreal, small, instantly conceived, to be
real in a time-scheme; therefore mystical, poetic. To the space-men,
the wholeness, the reality, is administrated by an anarchistic,
aristocratic God; a God too personal, too concretely particular, too
specially knowable, too real, in fact, to be real in a space-scheme;
therefore rationalistic, poetic. The time-men re-inforce the democratic
Self with Everybody. The space-men re-inforce God with Art, which is
a few superior minds capable of animating the material world ‘with
some degree of mental existence.’ For by itself--and this is Mr.
Lewis’s astounding conclusion--the material world is unreal. And we,
too, are unreal--we should regard ourselves, he thinks, as surface
creatures. But his conclusion is less astounding if we understand it
as the debater’s final shock that clinches the argument: the material
world is unreal and we too are unreal _if_ we do not believe in
reality. If we believe in reality ‘God becomes the supreme symbol of
our separation and of our limited transcendence.’ God is the queer
slant which through faith (the proper geometric point of view) may be
conceived as ultimately (that is, in the absolute sense) straight. And
faith is reason. In the time-scheme the democratic Self is the queer
slant; it is a sceptical, an ultimate queer slant. And scepticism
is romanticism: vague, insincere, sweeping transcendence of the
material world. Mr. Lewis, then, is not, as it at first seemed, against
transcendence, but only against temporal transcendence. He does not
object to evasion and philosophy, but rather wishes them to be more
zealous, individualistic, spatial; more evasive and philosophical; to
be Art. The temporal what-may-be comes too carelessly close to the
what-is. Art, backed up by God, begs the question more efficiently;
anarchistic but timid instead of socialistic but bold. It now only
remains to be decided whether Mr. Lewis’s stand-by is Art or God; and
since God was a late-comer in his scheme we can decide in favour of
Art--and Mr. Lewis.
(_e_) But Art. Art is artists. And what is artists? Artists is a few
superior minds. Artist is short for artists. Mr. Lewis is not short
for artists but long for himself. As between artists and himself, Mr.
Lewis decides in favour of himself; it is therefore still easier for
us to decide in favour of Mr. Lewis. Against artists. What is artists?
For example, Mr. E. M. Forster is artists, as is to be seen in his book
_Aspects of the Novel_. The novel is a ‘spongy tract.’ It is ‘bounded
by two chains of mountains ... Poetry and History....’ The novel tells
a story. The characters are either flat or round. The ‘element of
surprise’ ... is of great importance in a plot. Then Fantasy. (Here
compare Mr. Lewis’s treatment of _Ulysses_ with Mr. Forster’s and you
will understand perhaps why Mr. Lewis is not artists.) Then prophecy:
‘In Dostoevsky the characters and situations always stand for more
than themselves; infinity attends them; though they remain individuals
they expand to embrace it and summon it to embrace them; one can apply
to them the saying of St. Catherine of Sienna, that God is in the
soul and the soul is in God as the sea is in the fish and the fish is
in the sea.’ D. H. Lawrence is ‘the only prophetic novelist writing
to-day ... the only living novelist in whom the song predominates,
who has the rapt bardic quality, and whom it is idle to criticize.’
(Compare Mr. Lewis’s criticism of Lawrence with Mr. Forster’s, and you
will understand further why Mr. Lewis is not artists.) Then Pattern
and Rhythm. _Thais_ is the shape of an hour-glass. _Roman Pictures_,
by Percy Lubbock, is shaped like a grand chain. Also Henry James. But
a pattern must not be too rigid. If it is, ‘beauty has arrived, but
in too tyrannous a guise.’ For ‘the novel is not capable of as much
artistic development as the drama: its humanity or the grossness of
its material hinder it.... Still, this is not the end of our quest.
We will not give up the hope of beauty yet. Cannot it be introduced
into fiction by some other method than pattern? Let us edge rather
nervously towards the idea of “rhythm.”’ We then learn that ‘rhythm
is sometimes quite easy.’ And so to bed and pleasant dreams about the
development of the novel mixed up with the development of humanity
(‘the interminable tape-worm,’ as Mr. Forster had called it earlier
in the day when it was ‘wriggling on the forceps’). No, Mr. Lewis is
not artists. He is not an aristocrat, but a distracted and disaffected
rough-neck. He has no more real connection with aspects of the novel
than Nietzsche with any of the numerous ‘æsthetic revivals’ of his
time. Like Nietzsche his politics and philosophy are æsthetic only in
the sense that they are personal. His few ‘superior minds’ are himself.
If he had made this clear in the very beginning he would have saved
himself and those who have been good enough to follow him a great deal
of unnecessary distraction. Politeness, God, reality--these are all
Mr. Lewis in kid gloves embracing himself. His rightness consists in
his embracing himself, his wrongness in his wearing kid gloves. For
anarchism is not enough. It is obviously not enough for Mr. Lewis.
The kid gloves which enabled him to rush into society confused the
dualism on which selfhood certainly depends. When he takes them off
(as it is probable he will in time, for he does not seem happy in
them) and shakes himself by the bare hand, his enthusiasm over his
own unreal individuality will have a bare-handed social concomitant
more like Bolshevism than anarchism. Or rather, Mr. Lewis will find
that not even Bolshevism is enough. What is enough? Nothing is enough.
And until Mr. Lewis finds this out he will go on celebrating more and
more ferociously his ferocious pangs of hunger, seconded by dozens of
famished æsthetic revivalists.
HOW CAME IT ABOUT?
How came it about that Mrs. Paradise the dressmaker is here to dress
me, and Mr. Babcock the bootmaker to boot me and a whole science of
service to serve me, and that I am precisely here to be served? Do not
speak to me of economics: that is merely a question of how we arrange
matters between us. And do not speak to me of genesis: I am discussing
the question of Mrs. Paradise and Mr. Babcock and myself and the others
as immediate causes of one another, I am not discussing creation.
Personally, I do not believe in creation. Creation is stealing one
thing to turn it into another. What I _am_ discussing is existence,
uncorrupted by art--how came it about, and so forth. Do not speak to me
of love: Mrs. Paradise and Mr. Babcock and myself and all the others
do not like each other, in fact, we dislike each other because each of
us is most certainly the cause of the other. I am the reason for Mrs.
Paradise’s making frocks and Mrs. Paradise is the reason for my wearing
frocks. If it were not for each other we should be occupied only with
ourselves; we should not exist. How then came we to exist? I ask
this question. Mrs. Paradise asks this question. I am Mrs. Paradise’s
answer. Mrs. Paradise is my answer. As for Mr. Babcock, he has hair on
his nose and I never look at him. As for all the others, I must put up
a notice asking them to ring the bell gently.
* * * * *