|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 59
So there is something intensely irritating to us (although we admire
Mr. Lewis) in that "_She belongs, she understands, she is definitely
an artist._" In the first place, that use of the word _artist_ as
referring to a writer always gives us qualms unless used with great
care. Then again, _She belongs_ somehow seems to intimate that there
is a registered clique of authors, preferably those who come down
pretty heavily upon the disagreeable facts of life and catalogue
them with gluttonous care, which group is the only one that counts.
Now we are strong for disagreeable facts. We know a great many. But
somehow we cannot shake ourself loose from the instinctive
conviction that imagination is the without-which-nothing of the art
of fiction. Miss Stella Benson is one who is not unobservant of
disagreeables, but when she writes she can convey her satire in
flashing, fantastic absurdity, in a heavenly chiding so delicate and
subtle that the victim hardly knows he is being chidden. The
photographic facsimile of life always seems to us the lesser art,
because it is so plainly the easier course.
We fear we are not acute enough to explain just why it is that Mr.
Lewis's salute to Mrs. Scott bothers us so. But it does bother us a
good deal. We have nourished ourself, in the main, upon the work of
two modern writers: Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad; we
like to apply as a test such theories as we have been able to glean
from those writers. Faulty and erring as we are, we always rise from
Mr. Conrad's books purged and, for the moment, strengthened.
Apparent in him are that manly and honourable virtue, that strict
saline truth and scrupulous regard for life, that liberation from
cant, which seem to be inbred in those who have suffered the
exacting discipline of the hostile sea. Certainly Conrad cannot be
called a writer who has neglected the tragic side of things. Yet in
his "Notes on Life and Letters," we find this:
What one feels so hopelessly barren in declared pessimism is
just its arrogance. It seems as if the discovery made by many
men at various times that there is much evil in the world were
a source of proud and unholy joy unto some of the modern
writers. That frame of mind is not the proper one in which to
approach seriously the art of fiction.... To be hopeful in an
artistic sense it is not necessary to think that the world is
good. It is enough to believe that there is no impossibility of
its being made so.... I would ask that in his dealings with
mankind he [the writer] should be capable of giving a tender
recognition to their obscure virtues. I would not have him
impatient with their small failings and scornful of their
errors.
We fear that our mild protest is rather mixed and muddled. But what
we darkly feel is this: that no author "belongs," or "understands,"
or is "definitely an artist" who merely makes the phantoms of his
imagination paltry or ridiculous. They may be paltry, but they must
also be pitiable; they may be ridiculous, but they must also be
tragic. Many authors have fallen from the sublime to the ridiculous;
but, as Mr. Chesterton magnificently said, in order to make that
descent they must first reach the sublime.
[Illustration]
LETTING OUT THE FURNACE
The prudent commuter (and all commuters are prudent, for the others
are soon weeded out by the rigours of that way of life) keeps the
furnace going until early May in these latitudes--assuming that
there are small children in the house. None of those April hot waves
can fool him; he knows that, with cunning management, two or three
shovelfuls of coal a day will nurse the fire along, and there it is
in case of a sudden chilly squall. But when at last he lets the fire
die, and after its six months of constant and honourable service the
old boiler grows cold, the kindly glow fades and sinks downward out
of sight under a crust of gray clinkers, our friend muses tenderly
in his cellar, sitting on a packing case.
He thinks, first, how odd it is that when he said to himself, "We
might as well let the fire go out," it kept on sturdily burning,
without attention or fuel, for a day and a half; whereas if he had,
earlier in the season, neglected it even for a few hours, all would
have been cold and silent. He remembers, for instance, the tragic
evening with the mercury around zero, when, having (after supper)
arranged everything at full blast and all radiators comfortably
sizzling, he lay down on his couch to read Leonard Merrick,
intending to give all hands a warm house for the night. Very well;
but when he woke up around 2 A.M. and heard the tenor winds singing
through the woodland, how anxiously he stumbled down the cellar
stairs, fearing the worst. His fears were justified. There, on top
of the thick bed of silvery ashes, lay the last pallid rose of fire.
For as every pyrophil has noted, when the draught is left on, the
fire flees upward, leaving its final glow at the top; but when all
draughts are shut off, it sinkst downward, shyly hiding in the heart
of the mass.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|