Aspects of the novel
Those who are in touch with contemporary France, say that the present
generation follows the advice of Gide and the old lady and resolutely
hurls itself into confusion, and indeed admires English novelists on the
ground that they so seldom succeed in what they attempt. Compliments are
always delightful, but this particular one is a bit of a backhander. It
is like trying to lay an egg and being told you have produced a
paraboloid--more curious than gratifying. And what results when you try
to lay a paraboloid, I cannot conceive--perhaps the death of the hen.
That seems the danger in Gide's position--he sets out to lay a
paraboloid; he is not well advised, if he wants to write subconscious
novels, to reason so lucidly and patiently about the subconscious; he is
introducing mysticism at the wrong stage of the process. However that is
his affair. As a critic he is most stimulating, and the various bundles
of words he has called _Les Faux Monnayeurs_ will be enjoyed by all who
cannot tell what they think till they see what they say, or who weary of
the tyranny by the plot and of its alternative, tyranny by characters.
There is clearly something else in view, some other aspect or aspects
which we have yet to examine. We may suspect the claim to be consciously
subconscious, nevertheless there is a vague and vast residue into which
the subconscious enters. Poetry, religion, passion--we have not placed
them yet, and since we are critics—only critics--we must try to place
them, to catalogue the rainbow. We have already peeped and botanized
upon our mothers' graves.
The numbering of the warp and woof of the rainbow must accordingly be
attempted and we must now bring our minds to bear on the subject of
fantasy.
[Footnote 5: Paraphrased from _Les Faux Monnayeurs_, pp. 238-246.
My version, needless to say, conveys neither the subtlety nor the
balance of the original.]
VI
FANTASY
A course of lectures, if it is to be more than a collection of remarks,
must have an idea running through it. It must also have a subject, and
the idea ought to run through the subject too. This is so obvious as to
sound foolish, but any one who has tried to lecture will realize that
here is a genuine difficulty. A course, like any other collection of
words, generates an atmosphere. It has its own apparatus--a lecturer, an
audience or provision for one, it occurs at regular intervals, it is
announced by printed notices, and it has a financial side, though this
last is tactfully concealed. Thus it tends in its parasitic way to lead
a life of its own, and it and the idea running through it are apt to
move in one direction while the subject steals off in the other.
The idea running through these lectures is by now plain enough: that
there are in the novel two forces: human beings and a bundle of various
things not human beings, and that it is the novelist's business to
adjust these two forces and conciliate their claims. That is plain
enough, but does it run through the novel too? Perhaps our subject,
namely the books we have read, has stolen away from us while we
theorize, like a shadow from an ascending bird. The bird is all
right--it climbs, it is consistent and eminent. The shadow is all
right--it has flickered across roads and gardens. But the two things
resemble one another less and less, they do not touch as they did when
the bird rested its toes on the ground. Criticism, especially a critical
course, is so misleading. However lofty its intentions and sound its
method, its subject slides away from beneath it, imperceptibly away, and
lecturer and audience may awake with a start to find that they are
carrying on in a distinguished and intelligent manner, but in regions
which have nothing to do with anything they have read.
It was this that was worrying Gide, or rather one of the things that was
worrying him, for he has an anxious mind. When we try to translate truth
out of one sphere into another, whether from life into books or from
books into lectures, something happens to truth, it goes wrong, not
suddenly when it might be detected, but slowly. That long passage from
_Les Faux Monnayeurs_ already quoted, may recall the bird to its shadow.
It is not possible, after it, to apply the old apparatus any more. There
is more in the novel than time or people or logic or any of their
derivatives, more even than Fate. And by "more" I do not mean something
that excludes these aspects nor something that includes them, embraces
them. I mean something that cuts across them like a bar of light, that
is intimately connected with them at one place and patiently illumines
all their problems, and at another place shoots over or through them as
if they did not exist. We shall give that bar of light two names,
fantasy and prophecy.
The novels we have now to consider all tell a story, contain characters,
and have plots or bits of plots, so we could apply to them the apparatus
suited for Fielding or Arnold Bennett. But when I say two of their
names--_Tristram Shandy_ and _Moby Dick_--it is clear that we must stop
and think a moment. The bird and the shadow are too far apart. A new
formula must be found: the mere fact that one can mention Tristram and
Moby in a single sentence shows it. What an impossible pair! As far
apart as the poles. Yes. And like the poles they have one thing in
common, which the lands round the equator do not share: an axis. What is
essential in Sterne and Melville belongs to this new aspect of fiction:
the fantastic-prophetical axis. George Meredith touched it: he was
somewhat fantastic. So did Charlotte Brontë: she was a prophetess
occasionally. But in neither of these was it essential. Deprive them of
it, and a book remains which still resembles _Harry Richmond_ or
_Shirley_. Deprive Sterne or Melville of it, deprive Peacock or Max
Beerbohm or Virginia Woolf or Walter de la Mare or William Beckford or
James Joyce or D. H. Lawrence or Swift, and nothing is left at all.
Our easiest approach to a definition of any aspect of fiction is always
by considering the sort of demand it makes on the reader. Curiosity for
the story, human feelings and a sense of value for the characters,
intelligence and memory for the plot. What does fantasy ask of us? It
asks us to pay something, extra. It compels us to an adjustment that is
different to an adjustment required by a work of art, to an additional
adjustment. The other novelists say "Here is something that might occur
in your lives," the fantasist says "Here's something that could not
occur. I must ask you first to accept my book as a whole, and secondly
to accept certain things in my book." Many readers can grant the first
request, but refuse the second. "One knows a book isn't real," they say,
"still one does expect it to be natural, and this angel or midget or
ghost or silly delay about the child's birth--no, it is too much." They
either retract their original concession and stop reading, or if they do
go on it is with complete coldness, and they watch the gambols of the
author without realizing how much they may mean to him.
No doubt the above approach is not critically sound. We all know that a
work of art is an entity, etc., etc.; it has its own laws which are not
those of daily life, anything that suits it is true, so why should any
question arise about the angel, etc., except whether it is suitable to
its book? Why place an angel on a different basis from a stockbroker?
Once in the realm of the fictitious, what difference is there between an
apparition and a mortgage? I see the soundness of this argument, but my
heart refuses to assent. The general tone of novels is so literal that
when the fantastic is introduced it produces a special effect: some
readers are thrilled, others choked off: it demands an additional
adjustment because of the oddness of its method or subject matter--like
a sideshow in an exhibition where you have to pay sixpence as well as
the original entrance fee. Some readers pay with delight, it is only for
the sideshows that they entered the exhibition, and it is only to them I
can now speak. Others refuse with indignation, and these have our
sincere regards, for to dislike the fantastic in literature is not to
dislike literature. It does not even imply poverty of imagination, only
a disinclination to meet certain demands that are made on it. Mr.
Asquith (if gossip is correct) could not meet the demands made on him by
_Lady into Fox_. He should not have objected, he said, if the fox had
become a lady again, but as it was he was left with an uncomfortable
dissatisfied feeling. This feeling reflects no discredit either upon an
eminent politician or a charming book. It merely means that Mr. Asquith,
though a genuine lover of literature, could not pay the additional
sixpence--or rather he was willing to pay it but hoped to get it back
again at the end.
So fantasy asks us to pay something extra.
Let us now distinguish between fantasy and prophecy.
They are alike in having gods, and unlike in the gods they have. There
is in both the sense of mythology which differentiates them from other
aspects of our subject. An invocation is again possible, therefore on
behalf of fantasy let us now invoke all beings who inhabit the lower
air, the shallow water, and the smaller hills, all Fauns and Dryads and
slips of the memory, all verbal coincidences, Pans and puns, all that is
mediæval this side of the grave. When we come to prophecy, we shall
utter no invocation, but it will have been to whatever transcends our
abilities, even when it is human passion that transcends them, to the
deities of India, Greece, Scandinavia and Judæa, to all that is
mediæval beyond the grave and to Lucifer son of the morning. By their
mythologies we shall distinguish these two sorts of novels.
A number of rather small gods then should haunt us today--I would call
them fairies if the word were not consecrated to imbecility. (Do you
believe in fairies? No, not under any circumstances.) The stuff of daily
life will be tugged and strained in various directions, the earth will
be given little tilts mischievous or pensive, spot lights will fall on
objects that have no reason to anticipate or welcome them, and tragedy
herself, though not excluded, will have a fortuitous air as if a word
would disarm her. The power of fantasy penetrates into every corner of
the universe, but not into the forces that govern it--the stars that are
the brain of heaven, the army of unalterable law, remain untouched--and
novels of this type have an improvised air, which is the secret of their
force and charm. They may contain solid character-drawing, penetrating
and bitter criticism of conduct and civilization; yet our simile of the
beam of light must remain, and if one god must be invoked specially, let
us call upon Hermes--messenger, thief, and conductor of souls to a not
too terrible hereafter.
You will expect me now to say that a fantastic book asks us to accept
the supernatural. I will say it, but reluctantly, because any statement
as to their subject matter brings these novels into the claws of
critical apparatus, from which it is important that they should be
saved. It is truer of them than of most books that we can only know what
is in them by reading them, and their appeal is specially personal--they
are sideshows inside the main show. So I would rather hedge as much as
possible, and say that they ask us to accept either the supernatural or
its absence.
A reference to the greatest of the them--_Tristram Shandy_--will make
this point clear. The supernatural is absent from the Shandy ménage,
yet a thousand incidents suggest that it is not far off. It would not be
really odd, would it, if the furniture in Mr. Shandy's bedroom, where he