The Great Man
To the people who do not write it must seem odd that men and womenshould be willing to sacrifice their lives in the endeavour tofind new arrangements and combinations of words with which toexpress old thoughts and older emotions, yet that is not an unfairstatement of the task of the literary artist. Words--symbols thatrepresent the noises that human beings make with their tongues andlips and teeth--lie within our grasp like the fragments of ajig-saw puzzle, and we fit them into faulty pictures until our handsgrow weary and our eyes can no longer pretend to see the truth. Inorder to illustrate an infinitesimal fraction of our lives bymeans of this preposterous game we are willing to sacrifice allthe rest. While ordinary efficient men and women are enjoying thepromise of the morning, the fulfilment of the afternoon, thetranquillity of evening, we are still trying to discover a fittingepithet for the dew of dawn. For us Spring paves the woods withbeautiful words rather than flowers, and when we look into theeyes of our mistress we see nothing but adjectives. Love is anoccasion for songs; Death but the overburdened father of all oursaddest phrases. We are of those who are born crying into theworld because they cannot speak, and we end, like Stevenson, bylooking forward to our death because we have written a goodepitaph. Sometimes in the course of our frequent descents fromheaven to the waste-paper basket we feel that we lose too much toaccomplish so little. Does a handful of love-songs really outweighthe smile of a pretty girl, or a hardly-written romance compensatethe author for months of lost adventure? We have only one life tolive, and we spend the greater part of it writing the history ofdead hours. Our lives lack balance because we find it hard todiscover a mean between the triolet we wrote last I night and thebig book we are going to start tomorrow, and also because livingonly with our heads we tend to become top-heavy. We justify ourpresent discomfort with the promise of a bright future of flowersand sunshine and gladdest life, though we know that in the gardenof art there are many chrysalides and few butterflies. Few of usare fortunate enough to accomplish anything that was in the leastworth doing, so we fall back on the arid philosophy that it iseffort alone that counts.
Luckily--or suicide would be the rule rather than the exceptionfor artists--the long process of disillusionment is broken byhours when even the most self-critical feel nobly and indubitablygreat; and this is the only reward that most artists ever have fortheir labours, if we set a higher price on art than money. On thewhole, I am inclined to think that the artist is fully rewarded,for the common man can have no conception of the Joy that is to befound in belonging, though but momentarily and illusively, to thearistocracy of genius. To find the just word for all our emotions,to realise that our most trivial thought is illimitably creative,to feel that it is our lot to keep life's gladdest promises, tosee the great souls of men and women, steadfast in existence asstars in a windless pool--these, indeed, are no ordinarypleasures. Moreover, these hours of our illusory greatness endowus in their passing with a melancholy that is not tainted withbitteress. We have nothing to regret; we are in truth the richerfor our rare adventure. We have been permitted to explore theultimate possibilities of our nature, and if we might not keepthis newly-discovered territory, at least we did not return fromour travels with empty hands. Something of the glamour lingers,something perhaps of the wisdom, and it is with a heightenedpassion, a fiercer enthusiasm, that we set ourselves once more toour life-long task of chalking pink salmon and pinker sunsets onthe pavements of the world.
I once met an Englishman in the forest that starts outside Brusselsand stretches for a long day's journey across the hills. We found alittle cafe under the trees, and sat in the sun talking about modernEnglish literature all the afternoon. In this way we discovered thatwe had a common standpoint from which we judged works of art, thoughour judgments differed pleasantly and provided us with materialsfor agreeable discussion. By the time we had divided three bottles ofGueze Lambic, the noble beer of Belgium, we had already sketched out ascheme for the ideal literary newspaper. In other words, we hadachieved friendship.
When the afternoon grew suddenly cold, the Englishman led me off totea at his house, which was half-way up the hill out of Woluwe. Itwas one of those modern country cottages that Belgian architectssteal openly and without shame from their English confreres. We weremet at the garden gate by his daughter, a dark-haired girl offifteen or sixteen, so unreasonably beautiful that she made adisillusioned scribbler feel like a sad line out of one of thesaddest poems of Francis Thompson. In my mind I christened herMonica, because I did not like her real name. The house, with itsold furniture, its library, where the choice of books was clearlydictated by individual prejudices and affections, and itsunambitious parade of domestic happiness, heightened my melancholy.While tea was being prepared Monica showed me the garden. Onlya few daffodils and crocuses were in bloom, but she led me to therose garden, and told me that in the summer she could pick a greatbasket of roses every day. I pictured Monica to myself, gatheringher roses on a breathless summer afternoon, and returned to thehouse feeling like a battened version of the Reverend LaurenceSterne. I knew that I had gathered all my roses, and I thoughtregretfully of the chill loneliness of the world that lay beyond thelimits of this paradise.
This mood lingered with me during tea, and it was not till thatmeal was over that the miracle happened. I do not know whether itwas the Englishman or his wife that wrought the magic: or perhapsit was Monica, nibbling "speculations" with her sharp white teeth;but at all events I was led with delicate diplomacy to talk aboutmyself, and I presently realised that I was performing thegrateful labour really well. My words were warmed into life by aneloquence that is not ordinarily mine, my adjectives were neithercommonplace nor far-fetched, my adverbs fell into their socketswith a sob of joy. I spoke of myself with a noble sympathy, acompassion so intense that it seemed divinely altruistic. Andgradually, as the spirit of creation woke in my blood, I revealed,trembling between a natural sensitiveness and a generousabandonment of restraint, the inner life of a man of genius.
I passed lightly by his misunderstood childhood to concentrate mysympathies on the literary struggles of his youth. I spoke of theignoble environment, the material hardships, the masterpieces writtenat night to be condemned in the morning, the songs of his heart thatwere too great for his immature voice to sing; and all the while Ibade them watch the fire of his faith burning with a constant andquenchless flame. I traced the development of his powers, andinstanced some of his poems, my poems, which I recited so well thatthey sounded to me, and I swear to them also, like staves from anangelic hymn-book. I asked their compassion for the man who, havingsuch things in his heart, was compelled to waste his hours in sordidjournalistic labours.
So by degrees I brought them to the present time, when, fatigued bya world that would not acknowledge the truth of his message,the man of genius was preparing to retire from life, in order todevote himself to the composition of five or six masterpieces. Idescribed these masterpieces to them in outline, with a suggestivedetail dashed in here and there to show how they would be finished.Nothing is easier than to describe unwritten literary masterpiecesin outline; but by that time I had thoroughly convinced my audienceand myself, and we looked upon these things as completed books. Theatmosphere was charged with the spirit of high endeavour, ofwonderful accomplishment. I heard the Englishman breathing deeply,and through the dusk I was aware of the eyes of Monica, the wide,vague eyes of a young girl in which youth can find exactly what itpleases.
It is a good thing to be great once or twice in our lives, and thatnight I was wise enough to depart before the inevitable anti-climax.At the gate the Englishman pressed me warmly by the hand and beggedme to honour his house with my presence again. His wife echoed thewish, and Monica looked at me with those vacant eyes, that but a fewyears ago I would have charged with the wine of my song. As I stoodin the tram on my way back to Brussels I felt like a man recoveringfrom a terrible debauch, and I knew that the brief hour of my pridewas over, to return, perhaps, no more. Work was impossible to a m
anwho had expressed considerably more than he had to express, so I wentinto a cafe where there was a string band to play sentimental musicover the corpse of my genius. Chance took me to a table presided overby a waiter I singularly detested, and the last embers of mygreatness enabled me to order my drink in a voice so passionate thathe looked at me aghast and fled. By the time he returned with my hockthe tale was finished, and I tried to buy his toleration with anenormous _pourboire_.
No; I will return to that house on the hill above Woluwe no more, noteven to see Monica standing on tiptoe to pick her roses. For I haveleft a giant's robe hanging on a peg in the hall, and I would nothave those amiable people see how utterly incapable I am of fillingit under normal conditions. I feel, besides, a kind of sentimentaltenderness for this illusion fated to have so short a life. I am noHerod to slaughter babies, and it pleases me to think that it lingersyet in that delightful house with the books and the old furniture andMonica, even though I myself shall probably never see it again, eventhough the Englishman watches the publishers' announcements for themasterpieces that will never appear.
The Ghost Ship Page 20