The Wisdom of the Heart

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by Henry Miller


  Discipline Howe defines as “the art of the acceptance of the negative.” It is based on the recognition of the duality of life, of the relative rather than the absolute. Discipline permits a free flow of energy; it gives absolute freedom within relative limits. One develops despite circumstances, not because of them. This was a life wisdom known to Eastern peoples, handed down to us in many guises, not least of which is the significant study of symbols, known as astrology. Here time and growth are vital elements to the understanding of reality. Properly understood, there are no good or bad horoscopes, nor good or bad “aspects”; there is no moral or ethical examination of men or things, only a desire to get at the significance of the forces within and without, and their relationship. An attempt, in short, to arrive at a total grasp of the universe, and thus keep man anchored in the moving stream of life, which embraces known and unknown. Any and every moment, from this viewpoint, is therefore good or right, the best for whoever it be, for on how one orients himself to the moment depends the failure or fruitfulness of it. In a very real sense we can see today how man has really dislocated himself from the movement of life; he is somewhere on the periphery, whirling like a whirligig, going faster and faster and blinder and blinder. Unless he can make the gesture of surrender, unless he can let go the iron will which is merely an expression of his negation of life, he will never get back to the center and find his true being. It is not only the “dictators” who are possessed, but the whole world of men everywhere; we are in the grip of demonic forces created by our own fear and ignorance. We say No to everything, instinctively. Our very instincts are perverted, so that the word itself has come to lose all sense. The whole man acts not instinctively, but intuitively, because “his wishes are as much at one with the law as he is himself.” But to act intuitively one must obey the deeper law of love, which is based on absolute tolerance, the law which suffers or permits things to be as they are. Real love is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects, never demands. It replenishes, by grace of restoring unlimited circulation. It burns, because it knows the true meaning of sacrifice. It is life illumined.

  The idea of “unlimited circulation,” not only of the necessities of life, but of everything, is, if there be such a thing, the magic behind Howe’s philosophy. It is the most practical way of life, though seemingly impractical. Whether it be admitted or not, there are hierarchies of being, as well as of role. The highest types of men have always been those in favor of “unlimited circulation.” They were comparatively fearless and sought neither riches nor security, except in themselves. By abandoning all that they most cherished they found the way to a larger life. Their example still inspires us, though we follow them more with the eye than with the heart, if we follow at all. They never attempted to lead, but only to guide. The real leader has no need to lead—he is content to point the way. Unless we become our own leaders, content to be what we are in process of becoming, we shall always be servitors and idolaters. We have only what we merit; we would have infinitely more if we wanted less. The whole secret of salvation hinges on the conversion of word to deed, with and through the whole being. It is this turning in wholeness and faith, conversion, in the spiritual sense, which is the mystical dynamic of the fourth-dimensional view. I used the word salvation a moment ago, but salvation, like fear or death, when it is accepted and experienced, is no longer “salvation.” There is no salvation, really, only infinite realms of experience providing more and more tests, demanding more and more faith. Willy-nilly we are moving towards the Unknown, and the sooner and readier we give ourselves up to the experience, the better it will be for us. This very word which is so frequently on our lips today—transition—indicates increasing awareness, as well as apprehension. To become more aware is to sleep more soundly, to cease twitching and tossing. It is only when we get beyond phantasy, beyond wishing and dreaming, that the real conversion takes place and we awake re-born, the dream re-becomes reality. For reality is the goal, deny it how we will. And we can approach it only by an ever-expanding consciousness, by burning more and more brightly, until even memory itself vanishes.

  *I and Me; Time and the Child; War Dance, By E. Graham Howe.

  RAIMU

  IT IS as an American living in France, who has seen practically all the important films produced by Russia, Germany, France and America, that I write this tribute to Raimu whom I consider the most human figure on the screen today. Though it seems that the French films have at last won the recognition which they deserve, in America, from the titles which I see discussed I realize that these films which my countrymen are beginning to appreciate, ten years too late, are by no means the best which the French have to offer. America is always twenty to fifty years behind time in accepting the true genius of Europe. Even today, for example, they are still discovering, through their avant-garde reviews, such writers as Jean Cocteau and Leon Paul Fargue. Recently an American who came to visit me had the naïveté to ask me if I did not consider the author of Hommes de Bonne Volonté the Dos Passos of Europe!

  The fundamental difference between the French and American films, as everybody knows, lies in the understanding of what is human. A French film, when it is good, is unsurpassable, not only because it is more true to life but because this conception of life strikes a deeper note than anything conceived by Russians, Germans, or Americans. A fact often commented upon by foreigners is that French actors, male and female, are usually well advanced in years, usually quite unprepossessing, if not downright homely, and, when given the opportunity (which is not often enough), are capable of assuming the most diverse roles, including the comic as well as the tragic. In the American films, on the other hand, it is highly noticeable that there is not one great serious actor, unless it be the clown, Charlie Chaplin. (Men like Paul Muni and Edward Robinson, capable in their way, are always actors rather than men.) Anything verging on the tragic, in the American film, quickens into melodrama and sticky sentimentality. In the better French films (the poor ones are below every level!) there is always a sense of reality, of the tragicomedy of life. Where the French film fails is in the realm of imagination, of phantasy. It is the inherent weakness of the French character, the blind spot which accounts perhaps for the popularity of such a feeble masterpiece, in literature, as Le Grand Meaulnes. Among the French, one often hears it said that the American film, even if bad, is at any rate amusing. They are never thoroughly bored by a bad American film—so they say, at least. Myself, I am bored to tears often, even by the “great” American films. This attitude of the French is explicable only because they do not expect too much of anything American. A man would be an imbecile, for example, to be disappointed in a work of Maurice Dekobra’s. Somehow, much is expected of a good French film, even by the French.

  In Raimu, whose rise I have watched now for several years, the French people, the soul quality, I might say, makes itself manifest. Raimu is the one truly human figure on the screen today, and whether he be considered a good actor or a bad one is relatively unimportant. He represents something which is vitally missing in the cinema, and he represents it forcefully. To appreciate his contribution one has only to take a sidelong glance at his American counterpart, Wallace Beery. The latter, together with Gary Cooper, represent the highest efforts of the American producers to give us a semblance of the human being and not the Hollywood figure in papier-mâché. But they are usually cast for adventure, for thrilling episodes, for action. Only once was Gary Cooper, for example, permitted to express anything like his real self—in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Wallace Beery has never been given a role which would permit him to reveal his full stature—nor has Barbara Stanwyck, except for one film, Liliane, which was banned in America. To understand this deliberate deteriorization of character which Hollywood enforces one has only to reflect on what happens to the French actor whose services are impressed by Hollywood. Any ordinary French film starring Charles Boyer or Daniele Darrieux, for example, seems infinitely better than the sensational ones created for them in
America. What is the constant plaint of the French artist after his arrival in Hollywood? “They want to make us over!” It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd. Think of “making over” the heroine of Mayerling! Think of what it would mean to make over a Gabin or a Jouvet!

  I do not mean to imply by the foregoing that the French producers are animated only by lofty artistic ideals. I think, taking them by and large, that they are as guilty as the American producers of complicity in foisting upon the public anything and everything which will bring quick returns. They are as bad as the French publishers who are deliberately, cold-bloodedly, ruining the taste for good literature by their shameless concentration on the till. They are as bad as the French politicians who, bar none, are the most corrupt in the world. But there is something in the French character which, despite the lowest intentions, prevents them from completely betraying their heritage. The Frenchman is first and foremost a man. He is likeable often just because of his weaknesses, which are always thoroughly human, even if despicable. As a rogue and a scoundrel he is more often than not misled by a perverted sense of reality which he calls realism. But even at his worst there always remains an area—of the soul, shall I say?—with which one can deal and hope for an ultimate understanding. It is difficult for a Frenchman to wholly defeat the human being in himself. Race, tradition, culture—these speak out even when the mind has been traduced. And so, even with the worst motives, it often happens that a mediôcre French film offers something which the best films of other countries never take into account.

  Study the faces of the American stars! Compare them with the French. At a glance one can spot the difference—the contrast between adolescence and maturity, between a fake idealism and a grim sense of reality, between puppets who will perform any insane stunt and individuals who cannot be trained to act like monkeys no matter what bait is held out to them. The American cannot help making an ass of himself, even when he is inspired; the Frenchman is always a human being, even when he caricatures himself. The American ideal is youth—handsome, empty youth. Russia too idolizes youth, but what a difference between the two conceptions of youth! Russia is young in spirit, because the spirit is still vital; in America youth means simply athleticism, disrespect, gangsterism, or sickly idealism expressing itself through thinly disguised and badly digested social science theories acted out by idiots who are desperadoes at heart. Think of the American idol, James Cagney; or of Robert Taylor, the matinee idol of the screen; or of Clark Gable, the symbol of American vigor and manliness! What do they bring to the screen besides good looks, a fast, pat lingo, the art of fisticuffs, or a suit of well-tailored clothes? Think of Victor MacLaglen, for whose work in The Informer I have the highest admiration. Think, however, what it is America truly admires in him! They have made him the symbol of their own brutish nature.

  Let us get back to the human, to Raimu. . . . One of the things which impresses me most about Raimu is his habit of going about in shirt sleeves and suspenders, his struggles to lace his boots or to tie his cravat. He is always sweating (not perspiring!), always trying to unburden himself of his clothes, to give his body light and air. It is a quality which one almost never observes in an American actor. Raimu sweats, weeps, laughs, yells with pain. Raimu flies into a rage, an unholy rage, in which he is not ashamed to strike his wife or son, if deserving of his wrath. Wrath! Here again is something which is usually absent from the American’s repertoire of emotions. The wrath of Raimu is magnificent; there is something Biblical, something godlike about it. It springs up from that sense of justice which is never entirely stifled in the French and which, when roused, permits them to accomplish superhuman feats of strength and daring. When the American strikes it is really a reflex action. (Hie Englishman, be it noted, seldom resorts to violence; when he is sufficiently goaded he simply opens up, like the oyster, and devours his adversary. Yet the most sadistic picture I have ever seen, the only picture which I think should be banned, is the British production of Broken Blossom.) No, the American scarcely knows what anger is, nor joy, for that matter. He oscillates between cold-blooded murder, as depicted by the gangsters or those who are punishing them, and a bright, hard gaiety devoid of all sensitivity, all respect and consideration for the personality of the other. He is quick to kill or to laugh, but both his laughter and his murderousness are empty. The “fraicheur” which the French pretend to see in the impossible American farces is a hoax. The Americans are not young and fresh in spirit, but senile; their humor is hysterical, a reaction born of panic, of a refusal to look life in the face. The way they throw their bodies around, the way they pummel one another, the way they destroy themselves and the objects which they have created, what is it but a sort of ferocious nightmare activity? If this is “life,” then life is absurd. If this is health and youthfulness, then give me old age and melancholy. The crimes they commit in their sleep outdo the atrocities perpetrated by the most tyrannical despots.

  In Raimu I see the opposite of all this. In Raimu I see a heavy, sluggish figure, a man who is certainly not “refined,” a man who is not a “heart-breaker,” nor a “hero.” Everything he says and does is human and understandable, even his crimes. He never tries to be more than he is, or other than he is; he is never ridiculous, even when he inspires laughter. He is touching, an old-fashioned word, but one that suits him well. It is not an actor one watches in his films, but a man living his life: he breathes, sleeps, snores, sweats, chews, spits, curses, and so on. He is unlovely to look at, and yet he is far from being ugly. He redeems the human figure by stripping it of its superfluities, its external paraphernalia. Think of his emotions and compare them with the frowsy bag of tricks employed by that broken-down hack, Lionel Barrymore, who is about the only old man America can rustle up to enact anything resembling tragedy. What a farce, the Barrymore tradition! For John, the great matinee idol of twenty-five years ago, is even worse than Lionel. What empty words and gestures! What drivel! Even an avowedly bad actor, such as Jules Berry, puts him to shame. Even Victor Francen, who is about as stagey and unreal as any French actor can hope to be, is infinitely superior to this antiquated tragedian.

  It is when Raimu becomes violent that I like him best. His violence is slow in accumulating; it gathers like a storm-cloud and breaks with devastating fury, only to clear as quickly as it came. It is a purge, a creative purge, even to observe it as a spectator. This, I maintain, no American actor ever gives us. He can’t, because his theory of dynamics is all wrong. Everything, including metabolism, is sacrificed to speed and effect. Everything moves like lightning—but nothing ever happens. There is no drama—there is only the heat of frenzy in a void of the mind. Raimu, on the other hand, when he saunters slowly down a street or through the corridor of a hotel, when he lowers himself into a seat or leans against a wall to tell a story, is like a refreshing bath. He allows time for what is human in the individual to gather and grow, to express itself finally, when the moment is ripe, by an appropriate gesture, by a gush of words or by an act of silence. He makes no attempt to conceal his tears—he weeps openly and unashamedly. When an American weeps—and usually no one but a silly young virgin or a stereotyped old mother ever weeps in the films!—no emotion whatever is aroused. They are all trained “tear-jerkers,” to use an American expression. The tears do not well up from the feelings, but are pumped up by the will, or by the economic demands of the film director who values them at so much the ounce, like perfume. Why do the Americans envy and hate Garbo so? Because she is really a “tragic” figure, and because she has never concealed her scorn and contempt for their theories of art. To the American, Garbo, when she is not “grand” or “magnificent,” is melodramatic—or else an anaemic, flat-footed, tired Swede. But they are proud to have given her to the world, and however much they ridicule and malign her, they want the credit for discovering her talent. As to learning anything from her, no, absolutely impossible. She represents another wo
rld, another mode of life, not only alien but hostile to theirs. They boast about absorbing the best from the world, but actually they take only what suits their own low level of life and then impose it on the world as their creation.

  Only the other night I saw another Raimu film—The Hero of the Marne. Even without Raimu this picture would be the greatest of its genre ever produced. What a chasm between this quiet, moving spectacle and the false, trashy war films, such as those based on Remarque’s books, for example, from America! Who can believe in these fabricated celluloid horrors of war? What silly, empty, hundred per cent American imbeciles they try to palm off as Germans! What a literary air of unreality about these films! In the Hero of the Marne the war is made out to be what every sensitive man knows it to be—a fateful horror, a butchery which nobody is responsible for, unless it be the statesmen and financiers. It is a mess in which both sides appear guilty and equally responsible, and for our colossal ignorance and sinfulness the innocent, as well as the guilty, are made to perish. What is heroic in man, as this film seems to indicate, is not born out of a sense of “righteousness” but of the power of endurance, of the courage which arises from accepting the worst in our nature. It is the common, undenominated man who, almost against his will, it would appear, rises to the heights of heroism. The deep resignation, the acceptance of that which is revolting and unbearable, is here revealed as of the very essence of heroism. In Raimu’s portrayal of the dilemma one can see the spirit of the whole French people. He is a man of peace who is obliged to kill, and to offer his own flesh and blood to be killed too. He is not a patriot, but something far greater, far more inspiring: he is a man, and he acts like one. In his weakness he moves us even more than in his courageousness. He is what we all are, a mixture of good and bad, of wisdom and stupidity, of nobility and narrow-mindedness. He is not a paste-board figure pulled by the strings of an idealistic despot to prove the truth of an empty theory of life derived from a cheap Saturday Evening Post story which not even the editors themselves believe in.

 

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