JOCASTA (continued 2)

(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.