A
LITERARY TRINITY
The painting I had
commissioned from Nigel Hughes was at last finished. My desire to see what I liked to think of as
'the blessed trinity' of twentieth-century literature exhibited on one canvas
was about to be realized. The artist had
only to remove the drape under which he had ceremoniously concealed it ... for
me to witness the realization of a desire I had cherished these past five
months. I was on tenterhooks. Would it meet with my expectations, I wondered? Seated in an armchair in front of the easel
on which the finished product was resting, I bade my friend go ahead with the
unveiling. The drape slid to the floor
and there, before my eager eyes, the nude body of the canvas was at last
revealed!
"You like it?" he asked hopefully.
So great was my excitement at seeing the completed work, at
last, that I could scarcely reply!
Besides, the question seemed a little premature, not allowing me
sufficient time in which to come to a proper appreciation. But it was soon apparent to him, by the
spontaneous appearance of delight on my face, that I did like it, and
very much so! For he sighed his relief
and turned a proudly complacent smile upon me.
"Exactly as you specified," he declared.
"Even better," I managed to correct, looking from the elderly
face of John Cowper Powys on the left of the canvas to the middle-aged one of
Hermann Hesse in the centre, and then across to the youthful face of Aldous
Huxley on the right. The 'blessed
trinity' of twentieth-century literature as I conceived of it, the three great
cultural authors of the age. From
Nature-Worship to Buddhism via Zarathustrianism. Pantheism, dualism, and mysticism; the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And
each face portrayed with consummate skill and infinite care!
"It will look even better hanging in my study," I
opined, once this reassuring inspection had run its course and enabled me to
relax, in some measure, from the anticipatory strain experienced prior to the
unveiling. "I shall grant it a
privileged position above the mantelpiece.
The presence of such a painting there will have a salutary effect on my
writing."
Nigel smiled sympathetically and, abandoning the canvas, sat
himself down in the nearest armchair.
"And who is the one whom you most relate to as a writer?" he
at length asked.
"Undoubtedly
"Yes, I take your point," Nigel responded, smiling a
shade contemptuously. "
"In some respects I dare say it is," I answered,
turning my attention full upon him, "since my dualism incorporates the
integration of antitheses not only on a theological plane but also on an
ethical one, the plane of good and evil generally. Unlike Hesse, and to an even greater extent
Tolstoy, whom it's probably worth mentioning in this respect, I don't make a
point of creating characters who are either angels or demons, as it were, but
strive to integrate good and evil in each of them. Thus instead of one character being good and
another evil, my characters are both good and evil, and therefore men rather than
lopsided monsters. The character who
loses our respect in one context or place in the novel is just as likely to win
it back in another, and vice versa."
"Tolstoy certainly wouldn't have approved of that approach,"
Nigel frowningly averred. "He
wanted the author to take a moral stance on the side of good and to denounce
the evil character or characters in no uncertain terms!"
"Which is something I cannot bring myself to do," I
said. "For Tolstoy wanted authors
to create either angels or demons, not men.
But angels and demons are merely figments of the imagination rather than
reflections of human reality. The man
who's incapable of evil is no man at all.
He would be just as incapable of good.
But even Tolstoy, moral cretin that he aspired to being in theory, was
fundamentally a man, not an angel, and consequently he was perfectly capable of
facing-up to reality and indulging in evil."
Nigel looked puzzled.
"What kind of evil?" he asked.
"Oh, the usual kind: the actions or thoughts which proceed
from negative as opposed to positive feelings," I answered.
"You mean, one's feelings inevitably condition the nature
of one's morality, whether one is doing good or evil?" said Nigel
doubtfully.
"Of course!" I confidently declared. "What other criterion can one have? There's no escaping reality, no doing away
with evil for the sake of good.
Everything competitive pertains to evil, everything cooperative to good. Why?
Because in the first case one's feelings are negative, whereas in the
second case they're positive. So when he
attacked other authors in print, Tolstoy was doing evil, a perfectly legitimate
and sensible form of evil admittedly, but evil nonetheless!"
"Even when the authors fully deserved being attacked?"
Nigel queried, a somewhat sceptical expression marring an otherwise handsome
countenance.
"Most especially then," I assured him, nodding. "For one is likely to write more
scathingly against them in consequence.
One can only combat evil with evil, not with good, which, by contrast,
would lead one to ignore it, to 'turn the other cheek', as the saying
goes. And, in combating evil with evil,
one inevitably produces more evil. For
evil thrives on negativity, and aggression of whichever kind in whatever
context pertains to the negative. So
even the lopsided preacher of goodness was a man, a scowler as well as a
smiler. And because he knew how to
utilize both good and evil to his advantage, if unconsciously so, he was a
successful man, a famous one. That's the
way of the world. Those who most
successfully approximate to reality, who accept the responsibility of being
human, have their kingdom in this world rather than in any other. They're enabled to indulge their good and
evil sides, within the framework of the law, to the limit of their ability, as
demanded by their integrity as men."
"How d'you mean?" Nigel wanted to know.
"Take the case of a composer," I proceeded to explain,
"a composer, shall we say, who writes for the piano. Supposing he transmitted only positive
vibrations, only good feelings through his music, it would be akin to that of
an angel's and we would eventually grow tired of it. The gently lyrical sounds would be pleasing
for a while, but the longer they persisted the less we would appreciate them. Conversely, supposing he transmitted only
negative vibrations, only evil feelings through his music, it would be akin to
that of a demon's and, similarly, we would eventually tire of it. In both cases, the composer, transmitting
only one of the two sides of man's dual nature, would hardly achieve lasting
recognition as a truly great musician.
In fact, the chances are that he wouldn't be appreciated. But as soon as he combines both the good and
the evil approach, the positive and the negative vibrations, in the most
balanced and ingenious manner, ah! then our attention is held and he would be
recognized as the genuine man he was, the whole rather than part man. Now his greatness as a composer would depend
upon the extent of the good and evil to which he could attain, and would
accordingly be in direct proportion to this.
Thus the greatest composers would combine in the same work, though not
necessarily in the same movement, the most angelic sounds with the most
demonic, the sweetest with the sourest, through various gradations in
between."
"Hence the greatness of Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms,
Saint-Saëns, Rubenstein, Franck, and other such manly composers?" Nigel
suggested with a slightly roguish - or romantic - glint in his eyes.
"Absolutely!" I agreed without a moment's
hesitation. "Their greatness as men
is reflected in the spectrum of their music, which is somewhat wider than that
of lesser men. Indeed it's, above all,
in the nineteenth century that music most comes to reflect man's dual nature,
that man appears in it as he really is.
For prior to then, music was predominantly in the service of what
Spengler, the philosopher of history, calls 'the Culture', roughly
corresponding to Medieval and Reformation Christendom, with its emphasis on the
ideal of a good God, viz. Christ. As
such, composers were expected to approximate to this ideal as best they could,
and thus produce mainly positive or pleasant sounds. But with the gradual decline of 'the Culture'
throughout the eighteenth and, in particular, nineteenth centuries, music
increasingly came to reflect man's secular reality and accordingly utilized a
more balanced spectrum of sounds.
"However, only in the late-nineteenth and, to a much
greater extent, early-twentieth centuries does it become apparent that service
to an ideal is returning. For with the
development of what Spengler calls 'the Civilization', which sprang from the
decline of 'the Culture' as the Age of Reason superseded the Age of Faith, so
the balance of good and evil was gradually superseded by the predominance of
evil, of cacophonous sounds, which would seem to reflect service, if
unconsciously, to a devil, the devil, we may reasonably suppose, of
contemporary megalopolitan life. To have
attained, however, to true humanity, instead of being lopsided on the side of
either the angels or the demons, seems to me the mark of the greatest men,
whether they be composers, artists, writers, actors, statesmen, or
whatever. The Deists and Satanists, by
contrast, are almost monsters, though never quite what they appear to be, no
matter how hard they may try to excel themselves. Even Bach and Bartók were fundamentally men,
even if, from the viewpoint of their respective creative extremes, somewhat
lopsided ones!"
"And 'the blessed trinity' of twentieth-century literature
were also men, I take it?" Nigel remarked, turning his critical gaze upon
the painting.
"Naturally!" I affirmed, smiling. "Although the one in the centre, the
Spenglerian Hesse, was more consciously such, and therefore less inclined to
deceive himself than were the other two.
In Steppenwolf
he finally contrived to integrate the dual sides of his protagonist's
divided self in a balance of good and evil.
He created a man out of a veritable monster."
There was a short pause in the conversation whilst I
respectfully surveyed the three faces before me again: the exponent of
Elementalism, or sublimated nature-worship, with his belief in a Janus-faced
First Cause; the Zarathustrian dualist, with his Abraxas-like concept of God
embodied in the Self; and, finally, the advocate of the Perennial Philosophy,
with his penchant for the Clear Light of the Void and blissful absence of
conflict. Then, realizing that I had
nothing further to add to my previous comment, I bade Nigel Hughes wrap up the
painting and wrote him out a cheque for the fee required. What, exactly, people would think of Andy
Hammill's latest painting, I didn't know.
But I was pretty confident it would cause quite a theological
controversy nonetheless!