C. S. Lewis Weary of Apologetics
Many people know C. S. Lewis as probably the greatest Christian apologist to date. Fewer people know that, at least in his later years, Lewis found the whole topic of apologetics rather wearing. Said he in a letter from June 18, 1956, which I read a few weeks ago:
I envy you not having to think any more about Christian apologetics. My correspondents force the subject on me again and again. It is very wearing, and not v. good for one’s own faith. A Christian doctrine never seems less real to me than when I have just (even if successfully) been defending it. It is particularly tormenting when those who were converted by my books begin to relapse and raise new difficulties.
4 comments July 8, 2009
Beauty, Narcissism, and the Platonic Disdain for the Body – Part III
The first thing I notice is that my inner self is employing a different language. Suddenly all my thoughts are coming to me in English. There is not a hint of German left. And yet this does not really change the sense I have of myself. I still experience myself as the originator of my thoughts. My inner self merely resorts to different symbols in order to express itself.
Go here to read Part I and here to read Part II.
My acting produces the desired result: Prince Dwarf-chin’s breathing is getting faster. He looks at me as though Venus herself had breathed her charms on him. Obviously believing that he is only moments away from having garnered a beautiful princess for himself, which he can henceforth show off like a trophy, he takes the door handle and opens the entry way to the balcony.
But then he stops abruptly. ‘How cold it is out there!’ he says and blocks the doorway, desiring to protect his princess from the attack of the nightly air.
‘Prince,’ I smile charmingly and touch his chest. ‘I thank you for your chivalrous concern, but I often go out here in the night and gaze at the spheres of heaven. I shall not catch a cold because of a few minutes on the balcony.’
‘Still, take this,’ he insists and starts unbuttoning his black jacket. After he has taken if off, he slowly puts it around my shoulders and leaves the tips of his fingers strategically placed on my back. In this quintessentially romantic pose, in which all his manly feelings of protection and self-importance are realized, he leads me onto the balcony and shuts the door.
We stand next to each other for a while, looking up at the truly beautiful nocturnal sky. I doubt, however, that my royal companion has an eye for the planets moving in their faultless dance around the sun, that he wastes even one thought on the many bright stars to whom perfection is not a dream. No, his eyes keep darting towards my own spirited eyes, towards my silky cheeks and my marble-like neck, towards my bare skin half-concealed in a white dress. I look like a bride tonight, and the thought that I might soon be his bride seems to be nearly too much for his mannish imaginings.
He removes his hand from my back and joins it with his other hand in front of his chest. ‘M-Miss Whitrow. Caroline,’ he stutters. ‘I … I can conceal no longer my … ardent affection for you. Ever since I first met you two years ago in this very house have I realized that you, my dear Caroline, would be my perfect companion for life, a gem in the royal line, a princess whom such a title truly befits. I … therefore … ask … you to consent to be .. my … wife.’
And now Prince Dwarf-chin actually falls on one knee and takes my hands in his, looking in all the world like a dog gazing imploringly at its master. I feign to be impressed – touched, even – by his gallant love, by this true Prince who comes to rescue a poor Cinderella from her lonely existence. Little does he know that I am perfectly content with my existence; that the shape within the mirror is companion enough for me.
‘Prince,’ I whisper and gently raise him from his position. How pliable he is in my hands! I only have to move my fingers a little upwards, and his whole body immediately follows. Beauty puts men in bonds, does it not? I only have to tenderly touch his shoulders or chest or back, and he moves into the desired direction without hesitation. Indeed, such power nature has given us women that men feel compelled to give us little by way of the law, as Dr. Johnson has observed.
But for the same reason I cannot trust the Prince, or any other suitor for that matter. It is not they who are gentle and amiable; it is only the power of my beauty that has made them so. As Johnson has also said, beauty has often ‘roused the old to sensibility, and subdued the rigorous to softness’ – and I should add, has made the witless appear wise and turned the prosaic into the poetic, has made cold men seem romantic and the heartless seem amorous. But it is all a lie. They, by themselves, are none of these things. It is my beauty alone, the magic of my femininity, that transforms them for a moment, deluding them into thinking they possessed these characteristics by themselves, as the moon might think that its light is its own instead of a reflection of the sun.
I always thought that the poetic effusions of Ovid’s Cyclops lacked believability. ‘O Galatea, whiter than privet, bloominger than the meadows, slenderer than the long alder-tree, brighter than glass, more capering than the tender kid, and smoother than shells worn down by everlasting waves’ – are such the words of a stupid, one-eyed Cyclops? Hardly. They are not his own words at all but a mirage of Galatea’s feminine powers. She draws them out of him. She gives the ugly giant the façade of poetic charm.
The Beauty and the Beast – is that not an old theme in literature? Polyphemus and Galatea, Quasimodo and La Esmeralda – in each case the Beauty turns the Beast into something less beastly. Into something more likable. But what people do not realize is that the beastly nature is men’s true nature, and that the amiable part is only an appearance, a reflection of the power of the Beauty on the ugly surface of the Beast. The male Beast is only a mirror of the Beauty; left by himself, he remains as hollow and beastly as he appears to be.
Such imperfect mirrors they are! Why not use a real mirror in which my beauty finds a perfect reflection? Why be content with the so very imperfect reflection of myself in a Beast?
‘Prince,’ I say again as I gently turn him to face the railing of the balcony. ‘I shall give you my answer presently.’ Taking off a silken scarf from my dress, I blindfold him, making sure that I happen to brush his face and hair with my fingers while doing so.
He seems a little unsure, but also excited, at my unexpected and seemingly so romantic way of answering his proposal. My caressing fingers certainly appear to answer it in the affirmative, and his glowing cheeks and quivering lips show plainly what kind of answer he expects.
Still standing behind him, my fingers glide down the side of his shoulders, down his arms, until they rest lightly on his hands. These, I then move to his back until they touch. I take another silken scarf and begin binding them, once again taking care that I underline the action by Venusian touches. If he only knew that these are the only touches he shall ever have the benefit of receiving from me!
‘Stay here,’ I whisper in his ear and quietly withdraw, leaving him to stand by the railing. A moment later, I slip through the door and lock it from the inside.
Pocketing the key in an intimate place safe from male intrusion, I dispose of Prince Dwarf-chin’s jacket, tuck a few times on my dress, put on a nonchalant smile and rejoin the ball.
Add comment July 6, 2009
Beauty, Narcissism, and the Platonic Disdain for the Body – Part II
‘Be careful, Caroline. Do not be like Narcissus. His desire for himself killed him, Caroline. He waned away looking at his own reflection, while he could have been happy with Echo – or with any of his other suitors, as the case was. ’
Narcissus! How dare my father compare me to him! Narcissus! Narcissus was a bisexual, an animal driven by his bodily appetites. A typical man, really. I am supposed to be like him? How little my father truly understands me! But that is not surprising. He, too, is a man. One-eyed. A Cyclops.
What he does not understand is that my self-love is purely Platonic. I do not wane in front of the mirror wishing I could make love to the shape within. That is where Narcissus got it wrong. He did not realize that the image itself is the epitome of loveliness. Admiring it, not possessing it, is the highest goal. To possess it, to touch it, to transform it into the physical, would mean to ruin its purity. Plato was right: knowing the idea of a thing is greater than knowing a particular manifestation of the idea. The former is completely pure, the latter always corrupt.
It is the same with my shape in the mirror. It is the mirror that takes my physical body and purifies it, changes it, transports it from the world of particulars to the glorious world of ideas. It is that purity, that perfection, which I admire. I do not wane in desire for my physical body.
Indeed I do not. And I will never again desire a physical body – mine or anyone else’s. I once made that mistake, but never again. Yes, it is my secret. Nobody knows, but I once committed fornication. The man is dead now, though not by my hand, and he has taken our secret to the grave. I am very glad about that. If the fact became known, it would ruin all the little advantages I have thanks to my social standing.
In a way I am glad I committed the sin. It taught me a lesson. All my hopes, all my fantasies, were disappointed when I took off my garments and united my body to that of a man. I never imagined that intimacy would be so physical, so smelly, so animalistic. It is in the moment of sexual intimacy that two humans, otherwise so divine, descend to the level of mere beasts – shuffling and panting and following their instincts.
Well, I am done with it. Done with the sweat and smell and slime. Done with physical bodies, particularly male ones. They look so ugly, so misshapen. And they are so awkward, bumping and pulling and hurting you.
On that night I resolved that I would never get married. I would never again submit to such animal behaviour. The ancients were right in saying that we are partly beasts, partly gods. Why, then, if I have a choice, should I not choose the divine over the beastly? The ability to admire the shape within the mirror is the divine part; grasping and panting for another body is the beastly part.
I have made my choice. I shall be a goddess not a beast.
We have arrived at the door to the ballroom. My father puts his right hand on the door handle, stops and turns to look at me.
‘Caroline,’ he says in a stern whisper. ‘In this room are many suitors. You have played games long enough, flirting for the sake of flirtation rather than for serious commitment. Do accept one of your suitors soon, Caroline, or I shall have to think of other measures to make you conducive!’
Whatever he means by that.
‘And do,’ he adds, lifting his left index finger so close to my face that I can smell the brandy on it, ‘please do, by all means, act properly towards the Prince. He is here tonight, you realize that, do you not?’
‘Prince Dwarf-chin is here? I did not know that.’
I did know it, but feigning disinterest enhances my female superiority.
‘Prince Dw – Prince what did you call him?’
I love this expression on my father’s face. I love his look of surprise when I deride something he considers of great value.
‘Prince Dwarf-chin,’ I repeat, acting as if this were a reasonable name. ‘You know how I am with names, Father. I must have inherited the male weakness of always forgetting them. So I make up names myself, and I do recall that the Prince has a rather pointy chin, somewhat reminiscent of a dwarf, in my opinion.’
Oh how I love when my father tries hard to keep his anger under control! I like to provoke him, to tease him, to play with him. Cyclopes are fun to poke.
‘Caroline!’ my father fumes under his breath. ‘This Prince Dwarf-chin, as you call him, might very well be the future king of England! And if he – well, it is quite a preposterous thought – but if he chose my daughter for a wife, I should be the happiest man in the whole Kingdom. For that to happen, however, it is absolutely imperative that you behave properly towards him. That is, with decency and appropriate charm. With your present arrogance, you will die an old maid!’
‘Yes, Father,’ I say obligingly, for I know the right time to stop the poking.
‘Let us go in, then. Our guests are waiting.’ And, saying that, he pushes open the door.
‘Miss Whitrow, it is a pleasure to see you again,’ Prince Dwarf-chin bows stiffly in front of me.
‘Prince,’ I say and incline my head in acknowledgment of his inferior presence.
‘If you are not otherwise engaged, Miss Whitrow, would you do me the great honour of dancing with me?’ he asks with a degree of diffidence not quite befitting a great Prince.
I hesitate long enough to make him doubt whether I welcome or resent his invitation, before I answer, ‘Yes, thank you,’ and give him the satisfaction of an elegant curtsy.
A few minutes later, the next song begins: the melancholically romantic Nous Sommes Seul by Giacomo Puccini, though performed on instruments alone. I suppose that the pairs of dancers are meant to replace the two singers in the song who address each other like two lovers. How conducive to Dwarf-chin’s obvious partiality towards me! Did he know they were going to play this song? Did he perhaps even arrange it? It almost seems like he did.
Prince Dwarf-chin gently takes my hand, lifts it in the air and leads me to the dance floor. We turn and face each other. I smile at him, look at him as if in longing. Cyclops! He, too, is a Cyclops, ignorant that I am merely toying with him.
Oh yes, how ignorant! He has indeed mistaken my look, for after the dance he leads me away from the crowd to a deserted corner of the ballroom, and with every nervous step of his, my suspicion grows that he actually means to propose to me.
He stops. Blinking manifold times, scratching his dwarf-chin for no apparent reason, and shuffling his feet, he clears his throat and begins, ‘Miss Whitrow, I, er – ’
‘My dear Prince,’ I cut in and take his arm in a light, unconcerned motion. ‘Let us go out on the balcony. See! The door is right here. We shall be completely unobserved there, and besides, it is a very clear night. The stars are all out, and a clear, nightly sky always excites in me such an amorous mood.’ And I let a light flush come over my feminine face ‘the way a crimson awning, over marble, tings it in pastel colour,’ as Ovid says.
1 comment July 4, 2009
Beauty, Narcissism, and the Platonic Disdain for the Body – Part I
The following is an excerpt from my new book Ich, nackt im Universum, which consists of a few philosophical short pieces strung together by an overarching narrative. Though the book is mostly in German, there is one bilingual chapter. This is the English part:
The set of eyes gazing at me are the two loveliest eyes in England, they say. I cannot deny it, so far as I can judge from the multitude of eyes that have looked at me in my life of five and twenty. Never, in truth, have any of them penetrated me with the same charm, the same wholly feminine and secret admiration as these two.
They are mine own.
I let them wander, wander over the light flush of my smooth cheeks – ‘smoother than shells worn down by everlasting waves’, an admirer once pronounced them.
He was quoting Ovid, I believe. Very fitting, too, since the speaker in Ovid was a one-eyed giant, a Cyclops, addressing a young beauty beyond the reach of his lumbering arms.
Are not all men like Cyclopes? one-eyed, simple-minded, easily taken in?
A mere smile of my voluptuous lips lures the members of the clumsy sex into thinking that they had evoked my partiality towards them. And all the while they consider us the weaker, the naïve, sex! It is they who are naïve, they who are taken in by a mere smile, reading into it a meaning which is not there. Little do they know, indeed, that I reserve all my meaningful smiles for myself.
Oh why did Milton’s Eve turn away from the shape that looked up at her from the smooth lake? Sympathy and love had met her in the wat’ry image. A more admirable face she would never again behold in her life. Why did she turn to Adam, who was “less fair, less winning soft, less amiably mild” than herself? If Eve’s staying at the pool and admiring herself had meant mankind’s Fall, what a more glorious Fall it would have been than the mere eating of a Fruit! The heroic pathos of it!
I, however, shall not make the same mistake as the Miltonic Eve. Her smooth lake is hanging here on my wall, and I shall take pleasure in looking at it as often as I desire. The image therein is a reflection of that feminine wholeness in which mankind’s great Matriarch surpassed her male counterpart; it is that femininity that always has and always will surpass masculinity. The gracelessness, the grotesqueness, of the latter! The elegance, the aptness, of the former!
Three knocks on the door.
‘Caroline!’
Again three knocks.
‘Caroline!’ the voice of my father calls me. ‘Are you in there?’
‘Yes, Father, I am here.’
‘People are waiting for you, Caroline. The gentlemen who visit a ball at the Whitrow’s would be very disappointed to have been denied a glance at England’s most beautiful woman.’
‘Yes, of course, Father. I am coming.’
England’s most beautiful woman. Hearing the compliment still produces a rush of warmth in me, as often as I have heard it said before. It makes the image in the mirror all the more admirable.
I turn away from the mirror of my private chambers and move to the door. Upon opening it, the ugly face of my father meets me. I did not get my good looks from him, that is for sure.
‘Why did you not come, Caroline, when I sent your maid to summon you?’
Why not, indeed? because a lowly servant is not fit to summon ‘England’s most beautiful woman’.
Not being able to read my thoughts, my father exerts himself to make his all-too-clear point even clearer: ‘And why do you never attend a ball before being begged to come? Are my balls such a weariness to you that you only condescend to delight us with your presence after repeated petitions?’
Why do I wait? My father probably thinks it is because I get pleasure from being begged. That I relish the experience of waiting for the maid’s knocking on my door, and upon ignoring it, for my father’s coming personally. That I savour the thought of the gentlemen’s eyes darting lustfully but vainly through the ballroom in search for the famous beauty of the house. That I imagine them wondering and whispering where I am, until finally they can bear it no longer and inquire of my family as to my whereabouts.
How very wrong my father is about me. But all I say is, ‘No, Father, they are not a weariness to me,’ which, of course, does not answer his question.
‘Have been admiring yourself in the mirror again, have you not?’ my father asks as we walk down the hallway.
I do not answer.
‘Yes, I know about your habits, I do. I know many things, Caroline – ’
Is he implying something? Does he know –? No, he cannot know. No one knows. It is my secret.
2 comments July 3, 2009
New Book!
I’ve got a new book out this month. Let me just post the cover for now. As you might see, it’s in German, not in English, and I use my real name, not my pen name “Jacob Schriftman.”
More about the book later.
Add comment July 1, 2009
The Apocryphal New Testament
Have you ever read the Apocryphal New Testament? If not, let me say right away that the term Apocryphal New Testament is misleading. It gives the impression that it is fixed body of literature written at about the same time as the other New Testament documents, but that for some reason it was not selected to be the true account of Christianity. One might be tempted to think that the early church circulated various versions of Jesus and that one version (not necessarily the true one) ended up winning the day, as popular books such as The DaVinci Code suggest.
But that is a distortion of the picture. “Unlike the Apocrypha to the Old Testament,” says J. K. Elliott in the Preface to his translation of the Apocrypha, “which is in general universally identifiable, the texts included under a title such as The New Testament Apocrypha represent an amorphous and wide-ranging group. Unlike the New Testament, which is distinct and stable, and was written over only a short period of time, a collection of ‘apocryphal’ texts such as the present one does not constitute an agreed, settled entity written within a defined time scale.
“In fact one noteworthy feature of this literature—possibly because it lacked the sanctity of texts afforded canonical status—is that the contents of its books were frequently revised, expanded, epitomized, and rewritten. Thus several texts re-emerge in a new guise. (…) One may even take exception to the words ‘New Testament’ in the title. Many of the texts translated here have no obvious link with the genres of literature to be found in the canonical New Testament.”[1]
The Apocrypha were written later than the New Testament, many of them much later. Even the internal evidence makes this clear, since the books are for the most part embellished constructions around the New Testament records. They were written to satisfy the curiosity of those who wanted to know about all the “gaps” in the New Testament: more background information about Mary and Joseph, Jesus’ youth, what happened during the three days of His death, etc.
As J. K. Elliott writes, many of the Apocrypha “have been inspired by events, or gaps, in the New Testament narratives, or, at the very least, have made use of the New Testament’s dramatis personae. But, from the theological and literary point of view, the linking of these Apocryphal works to the New Testament has suggested some common identity between the two sets of texts thus making their interrelationship closer and more significant than it sometimes ought to be.”[2]
And M. R. James points out that the authors of the Apocrypha “do not speak with the voices of Paul or of John, or with the quiet simplicity of the three first Gospels. It is not unfair to say that when they attempt the former tone, they are theatrical, and when they essay the latter, they are jejune. In short, the result of anything like an attentive study of the literature, in bulk and in detail, is an added respect for the sense of the Church Catholic, and for the wisdom of the scholars of Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome.”[3]
This means that the Apocrypha are not at all on the same level as the New Testament writings. They actually underline the reliability of the latter, because they show what the canonical Gospels would have looked like if they had been made up mostly of legends. The Apocrypha furnish a good contrast of legend as opposed to reportage.
If the Gospels had been mere legends, they would not have left all those gaps in the narrative (gaps which are filled in the Apocrypha). If they had been legends, they would have furnished more eye-witnesses for the resurrection (the Apocrypha add more witnesses). It is clear that whereas the Gospel writers at least tried to record history—though certainly filtered through their unique perspectives and not entirely without an agenda—the writers of the Apocrypha only wrote to fulfill a certain agenda.
Read more about this in The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible.
[1] Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, Preface.
[2] Ibid.
[3] As quoted by Elliott in The Apocryphal New Testament, Preface.
Add comment June 30, 2009
Bathroom Literature: Atlantic Breakers on Innumerable Desolate Lands
My bathroom literature at the moment is The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis – perfect for the purpose of a quick read.
Now I just came across C. S. Lewis describing the county Donegal in Ireland, which is where I’ve moved with my family last month. This is what he says:
“Donegal which is a v. fine, wild country with green mountains, rich secretive valleys, and Atlantic breakers on innumerable desolate sands. But alas!, they get less desolate every year and it will soon just be a holiday resort like so many other places. (One always disapproves of all holiday-makers except oneself!)”
I’m glad to say that at least in our area, C. S. Lewis’ prediction has not come true. Our beach is still wonderfully desolate, even on a warm weekend. Miles of sand with hardly a soul around. I absolutely love running there, especially at sunset.
Here’s my son on the beach:
And here is the view out of my office window:
Add comment June 29, 2009
“The Purest Race” – Nietzsche on the Jews and Anti-Semitism
Taken from Beyond Good and Evil
It must be taken into the bargain, if various clouds and disturbances–in short, slight attacks of stupidity–pass over the spirit of a people that suffers and WANTS to suffer from national nervous fever and political ambition: for instance, among present-day Germans there is alternately the anti-French folly, the anti-Semitic folly, the anti-Polish folly, the Christian-romantic folly, the Wagnerian folly, the Teutonic folly, the Prussian folly (just look at those poor historians, the Sybels and Treitschkes, and their closely bandaged heads), and whatever else these little obscurations of the German spirit and conscience may be called.
May it be forgiven me that I, too, when on a short daring sojourn on very infected ground, did not remain wholly exempt from the disease, but like every one else, began to entertain thoughts about matters which did not concern me–the first symptom of political infection.
About the Jews, for instance, listen to the following:–I have never yet met a German who was favourably inclined to the Jews; and however decided the repudiation of actual anti-Semitism may be on the part of all prudent and political men, this prudence and policy is not perhaps directed against the nature of the sentiment itself, but only against its dangerous excess, and especially against the distasteful and infamous expression of this excess of sentiment; –on this point we must not deceive ourselves.
That Germany has amply SUFFICIENT Jews, that the German stomach, the German blood, has difficulty (and will long have difficulty) in disposing only of this quantity of “Jew”–as the Italian, the Frenchman, and the Englishman have done by means of a stronger digestion:–that is the unmistakable declaration and language of a general instinct, to which one must listen and according to which one must act. “Let no more Jews come in! And shut the doors, especially towards the East (also towards Austria)!”–thus commands the instinct of a people whose nature is still feeble and uncertain, so that it could be easily wiped out, easily extinguished, by a stronger race.
The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race at present living in Europe, they know how to succeed even under the worst conditions (in fact better than under favourable ones), by means of virtues of some sort, which one would like nowadays to label as vices–owing above all to a resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed before “modern ideas”, they alter only, WHEN they do alter, in the same way that the Russian Empire makes its conquest–as an empire that has plenty of time and is not of yesterday–namely, according to the principle, “as slowly as possible”!
A thinker who has the future of Europe at heart, will, in all his perspectives concerning the future, calculate upon the Jews, as he will calculate upon the Russians, as above all the surest and likeliest factors in the great play and battle of forces. That which is at present called a “nation” in Europe, and is really rather a RES FACTA than NATA (indeed, sometimes confusingly similar to a RES FICTA ET PICTA), is in every case something evolving, young, easily displaced, and not yet a race, much less such a race AERE PERENNUS, as the Jews are such “nations” should most carefully avoid all hot-headed rivalry and hostility!
It is certain that the Jews, if they desired–or if they were driven to it, as the anti-Semites seem to wish–COULD now have the ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe, that they are NOT working and planning for that end is equally certain.
Meanwhile, they rather wish and desire, even somewhat importunely, to be insorbed and absorbed by Europe, they long to be finally settled, authorized, and respected somewhere, and wish to put an end to the nomadic life, to the “wandering Jew”,–and one should certainly take account of this impulse and tendency, and MAKE ADVANCES to it (it possibly betokens a mitigation of the Jewish instincts) for which purpose it would perhaps be useful and fair to banish the anti-Semitic bawlers out of the country.
One should make advances with all prudence, and with selection, pretty much as the English nobility do It stands to reason that the more powerful and strongly marked types of new Germanism could enter into relation with the Jews with the least hesitation, for instance, the nobleman officer from the Prussian border it would be interesting in many ways to see whether the genius for money and patience (and especially some intellect and intellectuality–sadly lacking in the place referred to) could not in addition be annexed and trained to the hereditary art of commanding and obeying–for both of which the country in question has now a classic reputation But here it is expedient to break off my festal discourse and my sprightly Teutonomania for I have already reached my SERIOUS TOPIC, the “European problem,” as I understand it, the rearing of a new ruling caste for Europe.
Add comment June 27, 2009
On the Vice of Novel-Reading, Part II
Here’s Part II of the essay on the vice of novel-reading (take note that I skipped a big chunk in the middle that I found less interesting):
In expressing the idea that the reading of novels is only an amusement—to be taken up when there is nothing else to do—your average grocer, tailor, lawyer, or what not, has but spoken to you the world’s judgment. In fact there are countless readers of novels who have grown up in this atmosphere of conviction that novels are meant only to amuse. They are so habituated to the idea that novels, to them, are valueless—mere sentimental unrealities or spiced narratives of heated invention—so that they go through the treasure houses of genius without ever hearing the soft-voiced persuasion of knowledge or seeing the marvelous, vivid panorama of human life, illustrating its aspirations, sorrows, struggles, triumphs and failures. Such readers, convinced in advance that everything in a novel is fictitious, because the personages discussed are fictitious in name, never dream that study of the conduct of these personages may be useful to influence their own manners, conduct, morals or sympathies. Indeed, some of them are so confident of the unreality of novels that when they are confronted with their own counterparts in fictitious personality they feel a certain sense of humiliation as of being convicted of eccentricity, of an unlikeness to actual persons, which must be concealed as branding them “fit to be put into a novel.” To such persons novel-reading is a vice, because it is an indolent excitement, a mental opium-eating; the useless butting—against an unscalable wall—of brains intended to be fully occupied in developing those parts of the nervous and muscular systems that find their highest application in vigorous devotion to the washboard or the laying of gas pipes down.
What a different result is achieved by the reader who knows the secret that imagination is the soul of thought, that taste is the power of truth and that the abstractions produced by imagination and taste dealing with fact to convert it to fiction, or carefully assembling fiction to convert it to fact, have been the stars that have lighted up the night of human history. By the light of these in their varying forms man discovered Religion, Philosophy, Science, Government and the possibility of orderly Liberty. To such a reader the novel comprehends all human society, its customs and secrets. The untraveled man may sit in his library and become as familiar with the world as with his native town; the diffident student may mingle familiarly in the society of courts; the bashful girl may learn the most engaging manners; the slow may learn the trick of wit; the rich may learn sympathy for the poor; the weak may be warned against the pitfalls of temptation and every one may there survey himself in every aspect, subjected to discussion and exhibition under various disguises and under various circumstances; and, if he have courage and the desire, he can decide what he thinks of himself and the possibilities of improving the opinion in the light of full knowledge of the subject.
The Novel has come as the solvent of all literary art. In its possibilities all the essentials of other literary forms are combined and conveyed without injury. Professedly not History, it performs all its wonders in the guise of History and adds a light and a human interest to chronicle that gives increased value. We do not get sympathetic and human knowledge of England from History, but from Scott, Thackeray and her splendid historical novelists. We do not turn to Guizot and Thiers for any knowledge of French history except its stated public facts, its documents with royal seals and its verified dates and details—it is to Dumas, Merimee, Balzac that all but the professional students of history go. We do not seek in the rapid sketches of Gibbon for the story of Nero, but in the pages of “Quo Vadis.” Where do we find the breathing history of Spain except in the countless novels that its picturesque subjects have suggested? I would scorn to underestimate the profound and substantial value that the great muse of History has conferred upon the world. In all literature she deservedly ranks first in dignity, power and usefulness; but who will say that at her court the Prime Minister is not the Novel, which by its lightness, grace and address has popularized history all over the world?
While the Novel has none of the guise of poetry, yet it has its every essence, neglecting only form and rhyme. In the Novel you may find the measure, the accent and the figures of the whole range of poetry, and a capacity for inspiring enthusiasm and emulation quite as great as poetry unjoined to the divine enchantress, Music.
Plainly not Drama, yet what is more dramatic than the Novel? In the miracle of its pages you find theater, scenery, actors, audience and author. You may sit at your ease in your library chair and command the services of the most innumerable company of comedians, tragedians, lovers, ladies, buffoons, soubrettes and pantomimists that the world ever knew. How many novels have been turned into dramas, how few dramas have been successfully expanded into novels!
Thus the Novel, while it is not History nor Poetry nor the Drama, is a combination of all. And it possesses more than this. Its lightness enables it to tell the history of the commonest peasant—a subject that History disdained until the Novel bent to the task. Its flexibility makes it possible to write the history of types and classes; its capacity enables it to convey science, to teach morals, to illuminate the abstract difficulties of every philosophy, to utter the despairing human protests stifled elsewhere, and to embrace every purpose for which words were created and human aspirations were kindled. That it has lent itself to base uses is true. How could it escape the contamination that has smirched every other art? And, as in every other art, that which is base and false in fiction soon dies of its own inherent weakness and is forgotten. But decade by decade the Novel grows more powerful, more noble, and more adaptable to the spiritual uses of man. The time will come when the Novel will stand on the book-shelves with history, the philosophies and the sciences, as of equal honor and use—necessary to complete the education of every scholar; yet even then there will probably be a tribunal to pronounce it to be, if not a vice, at least of doubtful utility.
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