Tarr (Oxford World's Classics)

by Wyndham Lewis

  Anastasya sniffed.

  ‘I think you forget that it is my breast from which we started this rambling argument. Also I would take leave to observe that it is not so easy to blot out a food-unit as you appear to think.’

  ‘You sound like the Duchess in Alice.’*

  ‘Who on earth may that be—the Duchess of What?’

  ‘Of Alice.’

  ‘Oh. I was saying, it is by no means so easy—.’

  ‘I’m with you, I’m with you, you lovely contraption! But nevertheless it is time I were gone!’

  ‘He bursts into song!’

  Tarr sprang up in his chair and delivered himself rather breathlessly as follows:

  ‘Listen to my explanation, I would give all the world from the Baltic to the Rhine—bis an den Rin—Geliebte—* darling—pig-girl! to embrace a sucking-pig if it possessed all the other attributes, of body and the rest, of the person I am now addressing, but I meant only that everything we see—you understand, this universe of distinct images—must be reinterpreted to tally with all the senses and beyond that with our minds: so that was my meaning, the eye alone sees nothing at all but conventional phantoms.’

  Anastasya laughed shrilly and stretched up her arms above her head, looking down at the expansion of her breasts as she extended her torso to its limit.

  ‘So long as we understand each other—that is everything!’

  He stood up.

  ‘I am hungry, let us go and discuss these matters over a rump steak’ she said rising after him, shivering a little. ‘How damp this place is! I am cold.’

  He crossed the room to where his hat and coat were lying.

  ‘What does the good Bertha say to your new workshop? Now there’s a real woman for you! There’s no mistake about her!’

  ‘Yes good old Bertha’s the right stuff: she’s prime!’

  ‘My dear, she must be the world’s premier sucking-pig!’

  ‘The ne plus ultra!’

  ‘The Ding an sich!’* in the driest and most prolonged american she sang and they turned laughing unkindly at a certain homely womanly form towards the burnished door of the new workshop, passing the easel upon which the greek athlete, attacked with religion, disintegrated before the eyes of a watching harpie.*

  As they descended the Boulevard Rochechouart* Tarr stepped with an unmistakable male straddle: no bourgeoise this time! thought he to himself, but the perfect article! It rolled and swept beside him and more and more of its swagger got into his own gait until he was compelled to call a halt: he halted ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’*—a thousand transports crowded in her carriage and the impetuous rush of her advance—before a Charcuterie.

  ‘Delicatessen!’ he hissed significantly in her ear. In a protracted reverie they both directed their gaze upon a Frankfort sausage. They passed on, Tarr toning himself down as best he could but rehearsing to himself her perfections—No Grail-lady or any phantom of the celtic mind* but perfect meat, horse-sense, accent of Minnesota, music of the Steppes,* german Weltweisheit, Wesengefühl* and what-not—a prodigious mate!

  They entered an expensive trippers’ restaurant* and devoured the Menu with hungry eyes from top to bottom in an immediate scamper. They ordered oysters: they would be his first, he had never before dared to eat an oyster, because it was alive.

  When he told her that it was his first oyster she was exultant.

  ‘You perfect savage—your palate is as conservative as an ox’s. Kiss me Tarr—you have never done that either properly.’

  The use of his gentile name was a tremendous caress. She presented her salt wet eating lips, he kissed them properly with solemnity, adjusting his glasses afterwards.

  ‘Why have you never eaten oysters?’

  ‘The fact that they were alive has so far deterred me but I now see that I was wrong.’

  ‘You are afraid of everything that is alive!’ she assured him with a portentous nod.

  ‘Until I find that it is really not to be feared on that score I believe that is true.’

  ‘You have a marked prejudice in favour of what is dead?’

  ‘But all human food is killed first and is dead—all except oysters’ he objected.

  ‘You have a down on life—it’s no good!’

  ‘I am an artist.’

  ‘Yes I’ve heard that before!’ she blustered gaily with a german conviviality that made him feel more than ever at home. ‘But the artist has to hunt and kill his material so to speak just as primitive man had to do his own trapping butchering and cooking—it will not do to be squeamish if you are to become a great artist, Mister Tarr!’

  Tarr looked the great artist every inch as he haughtily replied:

  ‘Nevertheless there stands the fact that life is art’s rival in all particulars. They are de puntos* for ever and ever, you will see, if you observe closely.’

  ‘That I do not see.’

  ‘No because you mix them up in your own practice.’

  ‘The woman, I suppose?’

  Tarr gave her a hard dogmatic look and then asserted roundly, and probably finally:

  ‘As such, and with such resources, you are the arch-enemy of any picture.’

  Anastasya looked pleased, and looked a picture.

  ‘Yes I see how I might be that. But let us have a definition here and there. What is art?—it sounds like Pompous Pilate!’*

  ‘Life with all the humbug of living taken out of it: will that do?’

  ‘Very well: but what is life?’

  ‘Everything that is not yet purified so that it is art.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Very well: Death is the one attribute that is peculiar to life.’

  ‘And to art as well.’

  ‘Ah but it is impossible to imagine it in connection with art—that is if you understand art—that is the test for your understanding. Death is the motif* of all reality: the purest thought is ignorant of that motif.’

  ‘I ask you as a favour to define art for me, you have not. A picture is art if I am not mistaken, but a living person is life. We sitting here are life, if we were talking on a stage we should be art.’

  ‘A picture, and also the actors on a stage, are pure life. Art is merely what the picture and the stage-scene represent, and what we now, or any living person as such, only, does not: that is why you could say that the true statue can be smashed, and yet not die.’

  ‘Still.’

  ‘This is the essential point to grasp: Death is the thing that differentiates art and life. Art is identical with the idea of permanence. Art is a continuity and not an individual spasm: but life is the idea of the person.’

  Both their faces lost some of their colour, hers her white, his the strong, almost the ‘high,’ yellow.* They flung themselves upon each other socratically,* stowing away course after course.

  ‘You say that the actors upon the stage are pure life, yet they represent something that we do not. But “all the world’s a stage,” isn’t it?’

  ‘It was an actor that said that.* I say it’s all an atelier—“all the world’s a workshop” I should say. Consider the content of what we call art. A statue is art. It is a dead thing, a lump of stone or wood. Its lines and proportions are its soul. Anything living, quick and changing is bad art always; naked men and women are the worst art of all, because there are fewer semi-dead things about them. The shell of the tortoise, the plumage of a bird, makes these animals approach nearer to art. Soft, quivering and quick flesh is as far from art as it is possible for an object to be.’

  ‘Art is merely the dead, then?’

  ‘No, but deadness is the first condition of art. The armoured hide of the hippopotamus, the shell of the tortoise, feathers and machinery, you may put in one camp; naked pulsing and moving of the soft inside of life—along with elasticity of movement and consciousness—that goes in the opposite camp. Deadness is the first condition for art: the second is absence of soul, in the human and sentimental sense. With the statue its lines and m
asses are its soul, no restless inflammable ego is imagined for its interior: it has no inside: good art must have no inside: that is capital.’

  ‘Then why should human beings be chiefly represented in art?’

  ‘Because it is human beings that commission and buy the art.’

  A mixed grill Montebello and two Poulets grain had disappeared; a Soufflé Rothschild was appearing through the hatchway of the lift and a corbeille of fruit, comprising figs, peaches, nectarines and oranges, was held in readiness, a prominent still-life, upon a dresser.* Anastasya now stretched herself, clasping her hands in her lap. She smiled at Tarr. She had been driving hard inscrutable Art deeper and deeper into herself: she now drew it out and showed it to Tarr.

  ‘Art is all you say—have it your way: also something else: we will stick a little flag up and come back another day. I wish intensely to hear about life.’

  Tarr was staring, suspended, with a defunct smile, cut in half, at the still life. He turned his head slowly, with his mutilated smile, his glasses pitched forward somewhat.

  He looked at her for some time in a steady, depressed way: his eye was grateful not to have to be gibing.* Kindness—bestial kindness—would be an out-of-work thank God in this neighbourhood. The upper part of her head was massive and intelligent, the middle of her body was massive and exciting, there was no animalism-out-of-place in the shape of a weight of jaw—all the weight was in the head and hips. His steadfast ideas of the flower surrounded by dung were certainly challenged: but he brooded not yet convinced. Irritants were useful—he reached back doubtfully towards his bourgeoise: he was revolted as he recalled that mess, with this clean and solid object beneath his eyes, but he remained pensive. He preferred a cabin to a palace, and thought that a villa was better for him than either. The second bottle of champagne was finished; its legendary sparkle damped his spirits.

  ‘What did you make of Kreisler’s proceedings? He was a queer fish!’ she asked.

  ‘Most.’

  ‘Do you suppose he and Bertha got on very well?’

  ‘Was Bertha his mistress? I can’t say. That is not very interesting is it?’

  ‘Not Bertha, of course, but Kreisler had his points.’

  ‘You’re very hard on Bertha.’

  She put her tongue out at him as much as a small almond, and wrinkled up her nose.

  ‘What were Kreisler’s relations with you by the way?’ he enquired.

  ‘My relations with Kreisler consisted in a half-hour’s conversation with him in a restaurant, no more: I spoke to him several times after that but only for a few minutes. He was very excited the last time we met. I have a theory that his duel was due to unrequited passion for me. Your Bertha, on the other hand, has a theory that it was due to unrequited passion for her. I merely wondered if you had any information that might confirm her case or mine.’

  ‘No, I know nothing about it. I hold, myself, a quite different theory.’

  ‘What is that? That he was in love with you?’

  ‘My theory has not the charming simplicity of your theory or Bertha’s. I don’t believe that he was in love with anybody, I think that it was however a sex-tumult of sorts—.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘This is my theory. I believe that all the fuss he made was an attempt to get out of Art back into Life again. He was like a fish floundering about who had got into the wrong tank. Back into sex I think would describe where he wanted to get to: he was doing his best to get back into sex again out of a little puddle of art where he felt he was gradually expiring. He was an art-student without any talent you see, so the poor devil was leading a slovenly meaningless existence like thousands of others in the same case. He was very hard up, also. The sex-instinct of the average sensual man had become perverted into a false channel. Put it the other way round and say his art-instinct had been rooted out of sex, where it was useful, and naturally flourished, and had been exalted into a department by itself, where it bungled. The nearest the general run get to art is Action: sex is their form of art: the battle for existence is their picture. The moment they think or dream they develop an immense weight of cheap stagnating passion. Art, in the hands of the second-rate, is a curse, it is on a par with “freedom”—but we are not allowed to say second-rate are we’ he grinned ‘in the midst of a democracy! particularly such a “cultivated” one as this! But if you are forbidden to say second-rate, why then you must leave behind you all good sense—nothing can be discussed at all if you can’t say second-rate!’

  The drunkenness of Tarr had passed through the first despondent silence, and as his intelligence grew less firm in battle with the Roederer* he began to bluster in a sheepish sing-song interlarding his spasms of argument with dumb prosits.

  ‘Nobody’s claim is individual—issit!’ he hiccuped at his vis-à-vis, who now did nothing but eat. She shook her head, her mouth full.

  ‘Nobody’s!—an important type or original—as a pattern, that is the sanction of the first-ranker, am I right? The Many they are the eccentric—what do they matter? am I right or not?—they are “the individuals,” yes. Individuals! Well! Prosit Anastasya, let us drink to their confusion! To hell with economy, in any shape or form, to hell with it! Long live Waste! Hoch!’

  ‘I’ll drink to that!’ she exclaimed raising her glass. ‘Here’s to Waste. Hoch! Waste!’

  ‘Of course! Curse curse the principle of Humanity, curse that principle! Mute inglorious Miltons* are not mute for God in Heaven—they have the Silence!’

  ‘Ah. The Silence, that’s what they must have—Heaven is silent! How did you guess that?’

  ‘Bless Waste—Heaven bless Waste! Hoch Waste!’

  ‘Hoch!’

  ‘Here’s to Waste!’ Tarr announced loudly to the two waiters in front of the table. ‘Waste, waste; fling out into the streets: accept fools, compromise yourselves with the poor in spirit, it will all come in handy! Live like the lions in the forests, with fleas on your back. Above all, down with the Efficient Chimpanzee!’

  Anastasya’s eyes were bloodshot, Tarr patted her on the back.

  ‘There are no lions in the forests!’ she hiccuped, aiming blows at her chest. ‘You’re pulling my leg.’

  They had finished the fruit and were sitting before coffee filters while the sommelier hunted for vodka. Tarr had grown extremely expansive in every way: he began slapping her thighs to emphasize his points, as Diderot was in the habit of doing with the Princesse de Clèves.* After that he began kissing her when he had made a successful remark, to celebrate it. Their third bottle of wine had put art to flight; he lay back in his chair in prolonged bursts of laughter. She, in german fashion, clapped her hand over his mouth. He seized it with his teeth and made pale shell shapes in its brown fat.

  In a Café opposite the restaurant, where they next went, they had more vodka. They caressed each other’s hands now continually and even allowed themselves more intimate caresses: indifferent to the supercilious and bitter natives they became lost in lengthy kisses, their arms round each other’s necks.

  In a little cave of intoxicated affection, a conversation took place.

  ‘Have you darling often?’

  ‘What’s that you say dear?’ she asked with eager sleepy seriousness. The ‘dear’ reminded his dim spirit of accostings in the night-streets.

  ‘Have you often, I mean are you a grande amoureuse—on the grand scale?’

  ‘Why do you ask? are you curious?’

  ‘Only out of sympathy, only out of sympathy!’

  ‘I mustn’t tell you, you’d despise me terribly.’

  ‘I promise not to!’

  ‘I know I shall regret it!’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘I shall, all men are the same.’

  ‘Make an exception with me!’

  ‘Oh I mustn’t!’

  ‘Mustn’t you?’

  ‘Well I’ll tell you!’

  ‘Darling! Don’t if it hurts you!’

  ‘Not at all. Well then�
��I know you’ll hate me—well then, only one old Russian—oh yes and a Japanese, but that was a mistake.’

  ‘Have you only, with one old Russian?’

  ‘I knew you’d despise me, I should not have told you!’

  ‘Only one old Russian!’

  ‘There was the Japanese—but he was a mistake.’

  ‘Of what nature? Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Alas yes! He betrayed me upon the links* in New England.’

  ‘The cad!’

  ‘He was a caddie—but he apologized, he was most polite: he assured me it was an accident and I believe it was an accident.’

  ‘But how grim—I should have thought the colour line—.’*

  ‘He explained how it was a complete misunderstanding. His politeness left nothing to be desired, he was a perfect gentleman!’

  ‘Oh I am so glad!’

  ‘You despise me now?’

  ‘No women pals?’*

  ‘Nothing nothing nothing! I have told you except one old Russian!’

  She began sobbing upon his shoulder, her face covered with a lace handkerchief. He kissed her through the handkerchief and struck her gently upon the back.

  ‘Never mind’ he muttered ‘it’s all over now. It’s all over now!’

  She put her mouth up to be kissed exclaiming brokenly:

  ‘Say you don’t despise me too terribly Tarr! I want you so much! I really do want you—so much, so much! You will make up for everything!’

  A frown had gathered upon his flushed forehead.

  ‘Shall I? Why should I? I’m not going to be made a convenience of!’

  ‘I want you, I really do, enormously, I know you don’t believe me! I feel most terribly, oh! back-to-nature-like—do please believe me!’

  He thrust her rather brutally away on to her chair and himself lurched in the opposite direction, eyeing her askance.