Impromptu in Moribundia

by Patrick Hamilton

  To give any idea of Moribundian literature as a whole, therefore, would require a volume or volumes, and anything I write here must be thought of, not as literary criticism, but as mere journalism. In a single chapter of this sort I can only offer a few brief remarks of a general nature, and give one or two hints or suggestions as to who are, or are becoming, the most popular writers up there, and (judging from these) as to what I take to be characteristically Moribundian literature.

  That Moribundia has a characteristic literature there can be no doubt, but how to convey its quality to a worldly reader is indeed a problem.

  I think my best course will be, first of all, to mention the three great names which, I think, completely lead the field up there—names which no pious Moribundian can think of without satisfaction, pride, and gratitude—the names of Draydur Gnilpik, Ris Yrneh Tlobwen, and Nhoj Nahcub.38

  Many successors and imitators of these three great men come to my mind, but their supremacy remains unchallenged, and I am sure that no one would dispute that, in the works of these three, Moribundia, and the Moribundian outlook generally, finds its richest, completest, fruitiest expression. Indeed, if we were not dealing with an ideal world, I should say that these writers were almost too good to be true.

  What is it about these writers which places them head and shoulders above the others, which causes the true Moribundian, when reading them, to feel that his everyday feelings, his innermost thoughts, his remotest and most elusive ideals have been set down in immortal print?

  I often think that we form our best judgment of a writer less from what he writes than from what he does not write: it is from what he leaves unsaid, from what he either unconsciously or adroitly assumes the reader to take for granted, that we glean his true quality. Such a method of appraisal is especially useful when dealing with these three writers, who, as though making a delicate assumption of the reader’s breeding and integrity, leave a whole code of honour unsaid, and take a whole system of morals and politics entirely for granted.

  What is this code of honour which is not mentioned, but which can be read between every line they write? Obviously the code of the Akkup Bihas—the great Moribundian ruling and administrative caste.

  Again, it would require a separate volume to describe the Akkup Bihas in his completeness. I can only say here that he carries, in his full development, every quality of masculine idealism which I could see maturing in those wonderful boys who were playing cricket on the evening of my arrival.

  I have a particular reason in mentioning that cricket match, for the early training of the Akkup Bihas in this game, and in the ethics of this game, is subtly but inextricably involved in the whole outlook, attitude, and even manner of the writers in question. ‘To play with a straight bat’ is a famous Moribundian phrase in regard to character and behaviour. It is also possible to write with a straight bat, and these three are Writers with a Straight Bat of a quality such as is not likely to be found again in time or space.

  If I had room for it here I might trace the history of the Straight Bat in Moribundian literature from its earliest origins to the present time, seeking to discover the first, naivest wielders of the implement. I might even begin some centuries back, and fancy I saw the spirit trying its wings in so small and long-distant a writer as Lenoloc Ecalevol‚39 with his poem ending in the lines:

  I dluoc ton evol eeht, raed, os hcum

  Devol I ton ruonoh erom*

  after which I could trace the growth of the tendency through succeeding centuries to the last one, in which it climbs rapidly into maturity, being, every now and again, either furtively present or blazingly apparent in such widely divergent writers as Elylrac, Nosynnet, Htiderem, Yarekcaht, Nosnevets, even Gninworb.40… But I cannot pursue this here.

  To return to the Akkup Bihas. Apart from this question of his early training on the cricket field, I should say that his other qualities comprise, above all, a love of arms, of duty, and of silence—this together with a sober joy in a kind of freemasonry binding each Akkup Bihas to his fellow, even if their interests are opposed and they are in actual physical conflict with each other.

  Indeed, I sometimes think that this freemasonry is the most pronounced feature of the Akkup Bihas—the emotion which it inspires being carried to what would probably seem to us exaggerated lengths.

  In one of Yrneh Tlobwen’s most vivid and stirring poems, or, you might say, in one of his most glorious hits to the boundary off his straight bat, we find him speaking of the ideal:

  Ot ruonoh, sa uoy ekirts mih nwod

  Eht eof taht semoc htiw sselraef seye.

  which means, literally:

  To honour, as you strike him down

  The foe that comes with fearless eyes.41

  or, freely translated, ‘to see, at the moment of conflict, whether your antagonist is an Akkup Bihas like yourself, and if he is, to show the greatest deference for his courage even while you are hitting him so hard that he falls down.’

  Presumably the foe who is stricken down in this encounter is sensible of the same pure emotion, and such an attitude, adopted by either side in the heat of battle, is a feat of disinterestedness (and, indeed, Henry Cotton-like42 mental concentration at the moment of impact) which the non-Moribundian may hardly be able to understand, but which is a perfect example of the profound homage which each Akkub Bihas keeps in his firm, quiet breast for his equals.

  These three writers have portrayed the Akkup Bihas in all phases of his life—at school, at his games, at war, in remote lands—and under the spur of all emotions. It is Nhoj Nahcub, however, who furnishes the fullest, simplest, most charming and unassuming pictures of the Akkup Bihas in everyday life, as a lawyer, an M.P., an explorer, a soldier, etc., either at his club or at his country house—giving us countless little details about his muscles, his bones, his figure, the colour and quality of his eyes and the effect of the climate upon his skin, which brings him life-like before our eyes.

  The secret of the popularity and priority of place of these three in Moribundian literature cannot be attributed alone to their success in depicting the psychology, emotions and physique of the Akkup Bihas. Here, as everywhere else, the old Moribundian question of Change, or rather Changelessness, exerts its influence. It is not only that the (to Moribundians) impure thought of radical change has never in any guise sullied a line of their works: their whole fire, tendency, and literary skill (which is very great) are thrown into the service of the other cause—the burning portraiture of the ideal nature of the existing state of social affairs and class domination, the painting of it in those rich, glowing, ineffable hues which the less-inspired Moribundian may not have been able to discern, or, grown stale, may have forgotten—the revelation of the beauty, for all, of living in Moribundia, and the duty, for all, if need be, of dying for it. The wickedness and horror of the notion of any alteration of such a world is thus given by implication. It is as such that these three men (Moribundia being what it is and feeling what it does) take on the character of great teachers or seers, are, in fact, what I should call Moribundia’s Holy Men, along with the two great exponents of political astronomy, Snaej and Notgnidde.

  So much for the big three. I am tempted here very much to give some attention to the many smaller writers in the same vein, the candidates for the same laurels, who strive after the big manner without quite having the literary skill or taste to capture it. I should like to say something, for instance, of Nai Yah, Nerw P. C, Treblig Uaknarf, Yhtorod Sreyas, ‘Reppas,’43 etc.—in fact, all the other diligent popular portrayers of the same type and outlook: but space does not permit, nor are their literary merits of a high enough order or of lasting enough a quality to warrant discussion in a brief résumé of this sort.

  I have spoken so far only of those authors whose whole outlook is in brimming accord with the Moribundian outlook. The reader may be now wondering whether, in such a world, any other sort of writer is allowed to exist or finds any readers. Soon after I began my studies, I mad
e it my business to find out whether this was so or not, and I was at first amazed by what I discovered.

  This brings us to the question of censorship in Moribundia. As I have said, I found out that there was no actual censorship of any sort where literary works are concerned. Anybody could write whatever he wanted to write; though whether he was read was another problem.

  In view of the defensive and necessarily ruthless attitude of the Moribundians towards Change, this came as a great surprise to me, and bewildered me very much—especially as I soon came across various books, and highly popular books at that, which seemed to me to be expressing what would seem to be, from the Moribundian standpoint, decidedly audacious, if not definitely subversive, opinions.

  The mystery was, indeed, solved at last, but not until I had made an extensive study of the authors in question, and obtained a proper view of them and their literary records as a whole. I can best exemplify this apparent contradiction by mentioning the works of two widely-read authors—Dranreb Wahs and Trebreh Egroeg Sllew44—who, in a curious way of their own, hold a position in Moribundian literature second only to that held by the great three.

  Now, whatever else may be said about these two, their influence upon the minds of their own generation has been colossal, and the covers of their books are crammed with controversial matter in which the hypothesis of Change is being brought forward shamelessly again and again. How can their popularity in Moribundia be reconciled with these facts?

  This for a long time remained a mystery with me, until it began slowly to dawn upon me that the Moribundian authorities, in this matter of censorship, were a good deal wiser, more cunning and more patient than we are. That an eye had been kept from the beginning upon the writings of Messrs. Wahs and Sllew‚ I have no doubt. I also have no doubt that there must have been a strong temptation from time to time to suppress them utterly. Such, however, was not the Moribundian policy; the authorities, in their far-sighted wisdom, must have known always what it took the public years to discover, that is, that there was nowhere any deep-seated thought or love of really deep-seated change lurking behind the highly-readable polemics of these two, and that time would expose the unreality and irrelevance of their teachings. How justified they were time proved up to the hilt, as I was able myself to see when I read their works as a whole, and in chronological relation to changing events.

  In fact, the truth of the matter is that cunning Moribundia, so far from discouraging, looks with the utmost complacence upon public figures of this sort, knowing that a very high propaganda value can be extracted from the spectacle of their slow disintegration before facts, and their virtual reabsorption into the camp against which they once seemed to rebel. Anything more tragic, hollow, and helpless than their present state of muddle and intellectual inadequacy in face of modern events could not be imagined, and so yet another, and unusually cogent, example is given to the man in the street of the fate awaiting those who call into question the changeless character of an ideal world.

  Knowing these things, Moribundia, in cynical security, can afford to forget the grudge, and so in the course of time these writers begin to lose their black character and take on an almost lovable one, even amongst the most loyal and strait-laced Moribundians. They have shown themselves to have been bees that have stung without wounding: they have shown that there is no wound in the sting of all the other and lesser and future bees. Can one be surprised that, for making that most exhilarating demonstration, their indiscretions are gratefully forgiven, and that they at last gain a popularity which has in it something closely akin to affection?

  I do not say that this is the only reason why these two may be called, in the proper sense of the term, characteristically Moribundian authors or why they are so popular as such. In the case of Sllew, for instance, the service paid to orthodox Moribundia goes a good deal deeper, and is often quite direct. He never, for instance, when he gets a chance, fails to please the pious Moribundians by getting in a dig at that hell-on-Moribundia I have mentioned—Ehtteivosnoinu: whereas his hatred of the arch-anti-Moribundian—Xram—reaches such fantastic proportions and takes such incredible outlets, that he would, on this score, alone, be forgiven all his sins against the light.

  How deeply he must have felt on this subject is shown by the ill-concealed bitterness of his attack—by no means usual with him. Indeed, for the most part his writings are signalized by a sort of paternal and very grown-up equability towards everybody and everything, this being expressed in a warm, caressing, almost love-making style, which always makes me think of him, indeed, as a sort of universal Umpire in mankind’s schoolboyish cricket match—an umpire being incessantly asked whether or no certain political systems or ideas are ‘out’ and generally being forced to give an adverse verdict in a kindly way. Even if they are ‘not out’ the first time, the dismissal is pretty certain to fall a few overs later. (He turns out books almost weekly.)

  Another reason why the shrewder Moribundians are able to see that Sllew is at heart one with them, is, I think, the complete vacuum in which he writes—the total separation of his ideas from concrete and developing things as they are, his perfectly Moribundian belief in one sweet, absolute, unchanging Reason existing apart from facts—(yet hypothetically able to govern them)—an absolute reason whose formulas he, and a few others, are able to expound. But by a meaningless accident of time these secrets have remained concealed to past ages and one is forced to the conclusion that if only by a fluke Sllew had come on the scene earlier, and if only people had read him and done what he had told them to do when he had come, there would never have been any trouble. As things are, the next best thing is to read him and do what he tells us now.

  This attitude is manifest in nearly all the other Moribundian writers I read, even those who (like Dnartreb Llessur‚45 for instance) are for the most part irreconcilably hostile to the general Moribundian spirit, and who only by virtue of this ‘vacuum-morality’ can be styled in any sense Moribundian writers.

  When I speak of a ‘Moribundian’ writer I mean, of course, one who in greater or smaller degree allies or associates himself with the changeless ideal of ideal changelessness on which Moribundia is founded, and as it is a question of degree I often had difficulty in ascertaining whether a writer might be termed ‘Moribundian’ or not.

  This was particularly so when I came to make some appraisement of the younger or middle generation of intellectual writers. There are, of course, amongst these many easily discerned Moribundians, arch-Moribundians indeed—that is, avowed worshippers of the static (like Toile S. T. and his followers), but there are also plenty of what seemed to me border-line cases. How was I to classify, for instance, writers like Ecyoj, Yelxuh, Ecnerwal, Llewtis, Sevarg, Noossas,46 etc.?

  I have mentioned these names at random, but they all qualify in my opinion as authentic Moribundian writers, in spite of the fact that they are all on the surface rebels. They seem to me to be what they are because they have no other choice. This brings me to the whole question of literature in a changeless world.

  I think any worldly critic of these writers would agree that they are for the most part hopelessly and morbidly turned in upon themselves, and sterile in consequence. But where else are they to turn save upon themselves? In a world which is unchangeable and inexpandible, where is there to gaze save inwards? Obviously, if they are to look anywhere, they must look through the microscope, all the horizons for the telescope being closed: obviously, in doing so, they must become self-conscious to an ever more tormented degree, and paralysed for effective action accordingly. Finally, a stage must be reached when the mind can only look at ever-receding reaches of the mind, and an art on the border-line of madness or idiocy must be reached.

  Satisfying as the spectacle must be to true Moribundians, there is nothing more painful for one of our own world than to see a subversive intellect of, say, the Yelxuh type,47 beating round and round and driving itself to self-examining distraction in a world which has exhausted its possib
ilities of change—going on and on until it seems certain at last that it must throw itself upon that piteous act of faith which alone can put it out of its pain and bring it back to the piously Moribundian point from which it started.

  For these reasons art, literature, and poetry in Moribundia take on a more and more painfully subjective aspect, more and more the character of meaningless masturbation, there being no future which they can fertilize.

  There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, writers and poets who flatly deny the whole Moribundian teaching with regard to change and development: but they are, naturally, either ignored or regarded as eccentrics and poseurs.

  I repeat, then, that the writers I have mentioned, and the many others like them, may not inaccurately be described as Moribundian writers, for even those who have not already made the act of faith in question seem certain to do so in the near future, seem inevitably on their way to becoming Moribundian good boys, going to Moribundian Church, even if they fail to turn up in nice, clean collars.

  With regard to the rest of the Moribundia writers, hardly any problem arises. There is, up there, as down here, a vast army of writers simply writing to please a public and make money. Such writers are ‘Moribundian’ in so far as they are forced to please a Moribundian public, but ordinary love stories, and detective stories and adventure stories are turned out on a changeless pattern in any world.

  I am not going to say that there are not many in-between cases—lesser-known writers who are fully Moribundian, famous writers who are only half or not at all Moribundian, but it is quite beyond my scope to deal with them here. I have attempted in this chapter merely to show how the land lies and to give some idea of the sort of critical task which awaits this world when it comes to appraising the quality of the literary work of another. And it will have to come to that sooner or later—for this concrete world is coming to grips with that ideal one.