Imaginary Toys (14 page)

what they do, I have to have all the facts, and there are so many impalpables, I have to have the facts and the words and the numbers, you see, Elaine, and they don’t seem to matter to you, how can that be, Elaine, I don’t understand it at all, do you, it’s terribly difficult, and I love you, and Father Gibbons says we mustn’t make love, and the part of me that believes him says we mustn’t, and you say we must, and there’s another part of me that doesn’t believe him at all, and the two parts fight all the time, and it gets so difficult, Elaine. But I don’t think much about
love-making
these days, I haven’t, I mean, I’ve been concentrating on keeping near the top of the class, a good second, the old stand-by, marks, but though I haven’t felt that longing I tell you about, not recently, not the sudden almost uncontrollable desire, at least not often, not when I have to fight against myself so hard, you know how it is, Elaine, and you don’t help me, do you, you love me too much, perhaps, perhaps that’s the difference between a man and a woman, a man has to be absolute, definite, a woman doesn’t have to be, she takes what she needs, you’re a much more practical sex than we are, Elaine, at least you are much more practical than I am, aren’t you, I don’t know why that should be, but recently I’ve been thinking, I’ve been thinking quietly and steadily, not deliberately, it’s been going on silently while my mind has been checking the six points, I’ve suddenly found myself thinking about Father Gibbons and God, as though Father Gibbons was Leavis or Eliot, and I have to have my six points, of course, but this time I’ve got to think them up for myself, that’s the first time I’ve ever had to do it, ever had to appraise my own teacher, it’s a very strange feeling, always I’ve believed what my teachers have said, I haven’t questioned that they’re right, I’ve never had to have six points for a tutor, no one’s ever asked me for them, but now I’m giving marks almost, and taking them away, thinking up six points against Father Gibbons, and they are against, sometimes I stop and say to myself there must be another way of looking at him, think of Leavis and Eliot, but I can’t think of the six points for him, and I haven’t even got six against yet, but they’re forming, I can feel them forming, I think, I am going to make a decision for myself for a change, and it frightens me, because half the time I think he’s right, and then I find myself appraising, and it’s very muddling, Elaine, and I don’t think I’ll know what the decision is till—well, not till all this earthly exam is over next week, then I can start the heavenly one on Father Gibbons, and on God, do you understand me, Elaine, my
mind is thinking about it when I’m not thinking, almost, and I’ve no idea what it will say, but I’ve told you so much about it before, what do you do with all these letters I write to you, you can’t read them all, there are too many, or perhaps you do, and we never talk about them, do we, I just send them off, and I know you do read them, really, because you show it without talking about them, but don’t ever read them again, Elaine, because they would show me so muddled, and changing my mind all the time, but then that’s better than having a machine, at least I do change, that’s something, but I wish I could know definitely that I believed something myself, anything, and not just because someone has taught it to me, but then it will come in time, and perhaps when I am forty I shall be so different from what I am now that you won’t love me any more, and now, Elaine, it is time I went to bed, my six points are all there in my head, neatly stacked, ready to spring up when I press the button, like cards in a complicated filing cabinet, all I have to do is press the button. It’s odd, isn’t it, that I seem to have more leisure now to think than I had before, they are good for me, exams, they’re what I’m used to, I can cope with them, I enjoy them, I know what I’m doing, they don’t bother me at all, it’s just the preparing, the endless preparing, that’s so awful, trying to get as many facts and numbers and words into the cabinet ready to spring up, in a limited amount of time, and it’s all done now, nothing more to do, all done, the Diploma of Education is nothing, I could do it now, almost, it’s easy, this is the last proper exam I shall ever have to do, the last proper exam, and it’s a strange feeling, Elaine, a whole part of my life is suddenly stopping, I’m switching the points, I’m changing the currency again, perhaps, I wish I knew, it’s as though I’ve been playing that game all my life, Monopoly, and now it’s over, and it didn’t make any difference whether I won or not, it was only a game, and everyone won, you just had to go on playing, everyone won some time or another, but now there’s real money to be earned, or there will be next year, and real houses to be rented, and even a real jail, and real income tax, do you see what I mean, Elaine, and I’m thinking about things in that world, the real one, the future, not in terms of the old one, wholly new terms, new rules, it’s odd how easily I’ve shed the idea of marks in the bank, but good night now, Elaine, my Elaine, Elaine, I love you more than all the marks in the world, and more than all the real money, and more than anything on earth, and that isn’t much of a thing to say, but my imagination isn’t free
yet, and you’ll have to wait till I’m forty perhaps before I can tell you how much, but till then and till tomorrow, and don’t forget the six points, will you, Elaine, good night and much, Elaine, very much, Elaine, much much much.

Disaster has at last struck Charles. This morning Margaret took up where she had left off last week. She has joined some troupe which is performing a play at some minor amateur dramatic festival, God help her. The troupe leaves on Tuesday. The Commemoration Ball to which she was going with Charles is on Tuesday week. The parties and trips Charles has been planning for about six months (or so he suggests) are all off. He came to me about one o’clock this afternoon, white-faced, his car full of luxury foods. They had had a row yesterday before they came to the party. And this morning she simply gave him up. I did not listen to the full details, which would almost certainly have been painful. I just looked at the pile of paper bags. A few kumquats rolled about the bottom of the car. I took him to lunch in a pub. I did not know what to say or do. There is nothing one can say or do, of course. One’s silence is often appreciated at such times. To stop him getting drunk I took him to the cinema. This turned out to be a clever move. It was
Les
Jeux
Interdits,
extremely sad and good. Afterwards he was much more cheerful, though still white-faced. During the film he snuffled audibly, though whether this was at the story or his own misery I did not ask. I passed him my handkerchief, since he didn’t seem to have one, and he took it without a word. I nearly cried, too, but that was because children always make me want to cry. Something to do with the romantic notion of innocence, perhaps. Perhaps because I shall never have any of my own.

He had cheered up a lot by the time we parted. But I’m afraid he’s going to be depressed for the next few weeks, at least. It’s a pity he doesn’t leave now, instead of hanging around for the Commem. Taking someone else will only remind him that he isn’t taking Margaret. It’s not really fair to attack Margaret. She never
pretended
to be in love with him. She is very attractive, but she goes her own way. She won’t stay on the stage for long. Too much hard work and training. In about six months she will wake up and realize what she has lost in Charles. Then she will marry someone else. If Charles is her victim, she is a victim of the narrowness of feminine education, and the appalling disparity between the sexes, numerically, at Oxford.

The end has been in sight for a long time. Though the means were unexpected they justified both the end and its forecasters. (Ha, ha.)

*

Silence and absence still from Phi. I did not see Delta today, and do not expect to see him till after his Schools are over. If then. I’m rather afraid that he will go home and forget all about me. This will be a good thing for both of us in the long run. But sad for me now. After observing the love-affairs of my friends, I can only say that I feel blessed to be in this state of suspension. Jack and Elaine are presumably sleeping the sleep of the exhausted and innocent, after a hard day on Chaucer or whoever. How anyone can set, let alone answer, exams on literature I shall never understand.

Suppose you have two boys of equal intelligence. X says that
Hamlet
is a bad and boring play, second-rate Shakespeare, and gives reasoned arguments for holding this view. Y says that
Hamlet
is a good and fascinating play, first-class Shakespeare, and gives reasoned arguments for holding this view. How can you give the one more marks than the other? Yet one is right, I think, and the other wrong. English should be studied only by graduates, or as a branch of history or economics or philology. No one should be encouraged to express opinions about art until he has some notions about life.

*

I have been asked to join the staff of a new left-wing weekly, to be called
The
Democrat,
they think. It would be marvellous. A very
small staff, room to do what I should like. The offer is very tempting. But I have of course refused it. My life has been a consistent preparation for such a job. But it would be absurd, at this stage, to start unprepared. I have only a year or two to go.

*

Ideas towards a new system of aesthetics, or an attempt to decide why art is interesting or even important.

People say: ‘I do not understand Picasso, or Jackson Pollock.’ What do they mean when they say this?
They mean, I’m afraid, that they can find no ‘message’ in the pictures of Picasso and Pollock. The pictures do not seem to be saying anything. Therefore the people feel cheated. They have to assume that there is a ‘message’ in a work of art before they can start to look at it, to react.

And how do they react? Many people still think that art is Art, that it somehow puts one in touch with an Emersonian over-soul. It is assumed to have some mystical quality, whose proper
appreciation
makes one know, temporarily, what it is to be a god. This is the most obvious rubbish.

What then does one feel in front of a picture of a poem that ‘moves’ one? If it is not a sensation that makes one feel part of the whole way-of-being of the cosmos, what is it? suggest that one’s feeling is one, first, of
surprise.
Not necessarily of delight—though it may often be so. One is surprised and excited by a new idea or pattern or series of sounds or whatever. It is definitely
not
a feeling of
recognition.
One imagines that one has learnt some truth about the world which had not previously occurred to one. This does not mean, however, that one’s feeling is a mystical one, that one has touched on some great mystical force. On the contrary, one has learnt something about
oneself,
not about the world at all. One feels surprised: ‘I did not know that, I did not think that, and it is [or may be] true.’ Only so is art educative and socially valuable (or even of interest to the individual).

Culture, as practised and preached on both sides of the Atlantic, is vicious. It is like Ludo. Art objects are counters in a game you play with your neighbour. The Prado is worth a throw of six, the Frick only one. Museums in fact make true appreciation more difficult. (A poet may write a series of sonnets, but only the musician ever has the chance to have his works performed singly, as he wrote them. The poet loses his poems in a collection, the painter is
swamped in a gallery. I suppose even the sculptor becomes castrated once he is taken out of the open air.) Culture, too, is creating a world of criticism. The critic is interested in
how
a work of art succeeds. He says: ‘I like this because x, y and z.’ If he stopped there one would not mind so much. But he goes further. He says: ‘Because x, y and z, this work of art is good, and everyone should like it.’ He makes a very simple logical error. He says ‘I like this’ implies ‘it is to be liked’. He denies this hotly, of course. But there is no reason
why
he likes a particular work that is also a reason
why
that work of art is ‘to be liked’. At least, there is no satisfactory aesthetic bridge as yet. He confuses the
how
with the
what
of art, because he can only explain the
how
satisfactorily. But it is the
what
that makes art important and worth bothering with,
not
the
how.
Uncovering the art which the artist has been at great pains to conceal does not demonstrate the ‘goodness’ of the work.

One should judge a critic, therefore, not by his writings, but by his life. If he seems to have been an intelligent, lively, interested man, his works may possibly be worth glancing through. But as a general rule, study an artist’s work, but not his life, and a critic’s life, not his work.

The only possible justification of art is that it extends the listener’s (etc.) imagination. This service is unique and irreplaceable. So long as one considers that imaginations should be extended, as I hope most intelligent people do, then art is valuable. I can’t see any other reason for bothering with it.

The question remains: what does a work of art ‘mean’? The question shows a failure of understanding on the part of the questioner. What does a symphony ‘mean’? And it does extend the imagination, does it not? Why, then, expect a picture to ‘mean’ something? Literal-mindedness is almost always a mistake, in dealing with art as in dealing with life. This is not to say that there are not pictures that do have a meaning, but that ‘meaning’ is not a necessary ingredient of a work of art.

Writers have an advantage, of a sort. They usually have something to
say.
Words are their medium, words have meanings. Perhaps it is because England is so good at the written word that it is so bad at understanding or rather appreciating non-verbal arts. Any day of the week a painting is more likely to call out
The
Times
’
s
faithful letter-writers than a poem.

It is essential to abolish the idea of the mystical union with God or
at least angels. Mystic rubbish about art must go. Regular readings of Shelley should be avoided by maiden aunts.

Not a system of aesthetics at all, of course. Aesthetics basically very suspect, whatever the philosophers may say. Possibly to be studied as an ancillary discipline of animal psychology.

*

Two gems from Mary Moody Emerson:

‘How insipid is fiction to a mind touched with immortal views!’ 

‘I respect in a rich man the order of Providence.’

I wonder what she would have made of the National Health
Service.
I think the idea of Providence may have to be abolished along with her nephew’s over-soul.

*

‘When I got my First, the earth seemed to go suddenly flat and unroll itself like a red carpet.’ Charles said this this morning. He is examining his past with that ruefulness of which only the English are capable. It is perfectly true that there is a grave danger that academic and similar awards can mean too much. A First from Oxford or Cambridge is almost certainly over-valued on the market. I know several deeply stupid people who got Firsts, many highly intelligent ones who took Seconds. The trouble with Charles is that he is just rich enough not to have to worry about what he does
now,
but not quite rich enough not to have to worry about the future. Family firm appals him. Not I’m afraid on moral grounds—it is something to do with the armaments industry. I think he believes that to take a job in a family firm is to renounce one’s individuality, to fail to show one’s own worth. Not being in that position, I don’t know. But he doesn’t want to be a scholar or a teacher. He really should travel, perhaps. He is intelligent and engaging, good at making friends. He would make a good
old-fashioned
diplomat. Perhaps he should join the British Information Service. It would depress him after a time.

His trouble is the trouble of our generation. There doesn’t seem to be anything worth doing very much. Except from a purely material point of view. Basically this is a failure on the part of our political system. Since we envisage no goal, there is nothing to work for except oneself. But one has been taught that this is selfish, one has
a residue of guilt about doing things for purely selfish reasons. It isn’t that one wants a great big cause to go and join—that is simply escapism. Besides, there are plenty of causes. Nuclear Disarmament. A sane colonial policy. Reform in the laws against homosexuals. Prison reform. We do not lack causes—
The
Times
has columns of them every day. What we lack is a sense of purpose, a philosophy. This is recognized in a way by those who complain that there is no hopeful forward-looking philosophy these days. They complain of the decay of the Churches. But it is not an immortal future that we miss. It is a feeling we have that there is absolutely no point in doing anything for tomorrow, when tomorrow may very well not appear on schedule. I don’t feel any lack of Progressivism, I’m delighted that Progressivism has gone the way of Christianity. But unfortunately, like
Christianity,
it lingers on in the schools. We are taught to
expect
something
purposeful to fill our lives. And there is neither purpose nor Purpose. Things will not get better and better every day automatically.